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These seagrass meadows are highly productive habitats that provide many ecosystem services, including protecting the coast from storms and big waves, stabilising sediment, providing safe habitats for other species and encouraging biodiversity, enhancing water quality, and sequestering carbon and nutrients. [12] [3]
P. oceanica meadows play important roles in the maintenance of the geomorphology of Mediterranean coasts, which, among others, makes this seagrass a priority habitat of conservation. [40] Currently, the flowering and recruitment of P. oceanica seems to be more frequent than that expected in the past.
This seagrass is sensitive to light deprivation and a lowering of salinity in its environment. In a major flooding event in Queensland, half the seagrasses were lost in a shallow study area in Moreton Bay, the Syringodium isoetifolium disappearing almost completely while Zostera muelleri and other seagrass species survived, relatively unaffected. [4]
“Without the seagrass meadows, we’re going to see more coastal erosion, the loss of coral reefs, the loss of fish stocks, and degraded water quality,” he tells CNN.
The meadows of the community occur as both monospecific meadows (of P. australis) or as multispecies meadows (with, for example, P. australis together with Zostera muelleri subsp. capricorni, Halophila ovalis). The macrophyte, Ruppia, may also be found growing within the ecological community (Creese et al., 2009).
Seagrass meadows provide homes for young fish and protected creatures such as seahorses and stalked jellyfish.
Posidonia australis, also known as fibre-ball weed or ribbon weed, is a species of seagrass that occurs in the southern waters of Australia. It forms large meadows important to environmental conservation. Balls of decomposing detritus from the foliage are found along nearby shore-lines.
The leaves act as a trap and collect materials brought to the seagrass meadows. In turn this helps keep the ecosystem clear and clean of any material (Bjork, Mats, et al.). Unfortunately, much like other environments in the world, human development can alter the ecology of the sea grasses and therefore the coast of Florida is starting to lose ...