. The ecology of delta marshes of coastal Louisiana : a community profile. Marsh ecology -- Louisiana; Wetlands -- Louisiana. fonii is present year round. Free ammoniuin is the only forn of inorganic nitrogen available to plants in these reduced soils. In streamside marshes it is naintained at a low level of 1 - 2 pg/ml by plant uptake during the spring and suiii'iier, building up in the fall when plant growth tapers off. Epiphytic Algae Where emergent grasses and algae grow together the grass is probably nearly always the dominant producer. Certainly. it develops the largest biomass, but this
. The ecology of delta marshes of coastal Louisiana : a community profile. Marsh ecology -- Louisiana; Wetlands -- Louisiana. fonii is present year round. Free ammoniuin is the only forn of inorganic nitrogen available to plants in these reduced soils. In streamside marshes it is naintained at a low level of 1 - 2 pg/ml by plant uptake during the spring and suiii'iier, building up in the fall when plant growth tapers off. Epiphytic Algae Where emergent grasses and algae grow together the grass is probably nearly always the dominant producer. Certainly. it develops the largest biomass, but this is not a good criterion for comparison because the turnover rate of algae is much faster than that of grass. In a study in which the carbon dioxide uptake of both of these groups was measured simultaneously (Gosselink et al. 1977), the algal community was responsible for only 4-11 percent of the photosynthesis but 61 - 76 percent of the total respiration (Table 18). It has not been possible to separate out from the plants the respiratory associated with the active - bacteria, fungi, protozoans, invertebrates - found in this activi ty consumers and other communi ty. Stowe (1972) found that only along the edges of the marsh where adequate light penetrated did photosynthesis exceed respiration (Figure 50). He estimated that net carbon (C) fixation amounted to about 60 g C/m^ annually at the water's edge, compared to -18 g C/m^ inland. The inland community was consuming more organic carbon than it produced. Nearly all of the photosynthetic activity was associated with organisms growing on the base of S_. al terniflora culms rather than on the sediment surface. Filamentous algal production was dominated by the genera Enteromorpha and Ectocarpus in the winter and Bostrichia and Polysiphonia in the summer. The diatom community was also abundant; the cells clustered on the intertidal portion of the culms, decreasing in concentration upward into the drier environment (Figure 51). Altho
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionbio, booksubjectwetlandslouisiana
