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🌿 How Coastal Wetlands Cycle Nutrients

Follow nitrogen and phosphorus through tides, sediment, plants, microbes, and management to see when coastal wetlands retain, transform, or export nutrients.

4
lessons
~10 min
to learn
Adults
level
Start the course →

What you’ll learn

  1. Nutrients move through a wetlandExplain how water, tides, and sediment move nitrogen and phosphorus through a coastal wetland.Wetlands act as sources, sinks, and transformers as runoff, groundwater, tides, and sediment exchange nutrients.
  2. Plants and microbes transform nutrientsDescribe how plants, roots, microbes, denitrification, and soil chemistry change nutrient forms.Biological uptake, decomposition, microbial reactions, and mineral binding create a shifting underground nutrient network.
  3. Nutrient overload changes the systemConnect nutrient enrichment and salinity change to oxygen, carbon, and ecosystem responses.Excess nutrients and changing salt conditions can alter productivity, oxygen, carbon storage, and downstream water quality.
  4. Management follows the budgetDesign evidence-based nutrient management that matches an intervention to a measurable pathway.Source reduction, restoration, and monitoring work best when they state a mechanism and track nutrient flux through time.

Questions this course answers

What does denitrification do in oxygen-poor wetland sediment?

Denitrifying microbes can use nitrate while decomposing organic matter, converting nitrogen to gases such as N2.

Why can excess nitrogen and phosphorus reduce dissolved oxygen?

Nutrient enrichment can increase algae or plant biomass; decomposers use oxygen as that biomass breaks down.

Put a credible wetland nutrient-management test in order.

A strong test begins with a mechanism, measures linked indicators, applies the intervention, and compares change over time.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • U.S. Geological Survey, Wetlands and Estuaries, https://www.usgs.gov/science/science-explorer/coasts/wetlands-and-estuaries
  • U.S. Geological Survey, Sea level rise and nutrient cycling in coastal wetlands, https://www.usgs.gov/news/sea-level-rise-and-nutrient-cycling-coastal-wetlands
  • U.S. Geological Survey, Geochemical data supporting investigation of solute and particle cycling and fluxes from two tidal wetlands, https://www.usgs.gov/data/geochemical-data-supporting-investigation-solute-and-particle-cycling-and-fluxes-two-tidal
  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Criteria Development Guidance for Wetlands Fact Sheet, https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/criteria-development-guidance-wetlands-fact-sheet
  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Why Monitoring of the Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands is Important, https://www.epa.gov/great-lakes-monitoring/why-monitoring-great-lakes-coastal-wetlands-important
  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Where This Occurs: Coasts and Bays, https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/where-occurs-coasts-and-bays
  • NOAA Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division, Nutrient Biogeochemistry, https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/ocdweb/nutrients.html

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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