강화 동검도 염습지 식생의 분포와 저서환경조건의 시.공간적 변화

Abstract

This study examined the effect of salt marsh vegetation on the benthic environment at macro-tidal flats in Donggeomdo, Ganghwa, in the west coast of Korea. Nine stations on a transect across the tidal flat including salt marsh were fixed and field sampling were carried out at a monthly scale from July 1997 to June 1998. During the study period, the range of environmental parameters fluctuated was as follows: salinity from 15.0 to 28.2 psu, exposure time from 613 to 702 hr/m, inundation time from 28 to 117 hr/m, sediment organic carbon from 0.71 to 1.34%, nitrogen from 0.07 to 0.16%, sulfur from 0.07 to 0.22%, mean grain size from 6.3 to 6.9 ø, water content from 19.4 to 44.4%, water temperature from 4.4 to 20.4℃ and temperature of the surface sediments from 2.7 to 31.1℃. A total of seven halophyte species have sampled and distributed vertically along the tidal levels. Carex scabrifolia, Suaeda maritima, Limonium tetragonum and Phragmites communis dominated the upper zone of the salt marsh, Juncus haenkei, Triglochin maritimum and P. communis the middle zone, and Suaeda japonica the lower area. Principal component analysis (PCA) and non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) revealed that the zonation of halophytes was related to the environment variables such as salinity and exposure time. The halophyte communities were likely to the organic contents in the surface sediment.