The Role of Aquatic Vegetation in Enhancing Ecosystem Services in Shallow Water Systems

Abstract

Global "biogeochemical hotspots", shallow water systems (including lakes, estuaries, and marshes) support vital ecosystem services including water purification, flood protection, and biodiversity support. These ecosystems have suffered widespread deterioration, primarily due to anthropogenic stresses including cultural eutrophication, urbanization, and climate change, driving them towards the ecological tipping points at which rapid, often irreversible, regime shifts are triggered. Aquatic vegetation (submerged macrophytes and seagrass) is a dominant ecosystem engineer and is responsible for reinforcing sediments and regulating nutrient cycles while providing an essential habitat for aquatic animals. This paper presents a systematic literature review (based on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment framework) that examines how this vegetation communities enhance provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural ecosystem services. An examination of 45 peer-reviewed studies has enabled this paper to elaborate on the ways vegetation dampens turbidity, sequesters Blue Carbon, and coastal geomorphological stability against hydraulic stress. The evidence suggests that vegetation provides an important nature-based solution that buffers systems against stress, but ecosystem collapse is often triggered at threshold vegetative densities where a switch from a clear to a turbid phytoplankton-dominated state occurs. In conclusion, effective vegetative structural maintenance is crucial to reversing ecosystem degradation and improving long-term system resistance against the pervasive impacts of ecological disturbance in shallow water systems.