ArticlePloS one2025
Functions of coastal feeder bluff systems: Implications for prioritizing protection and restoration.
Article in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Actively eroding cliffs, known as feeder bluffs, are important sources of sediment for coastal beaches. When shorelines have artificial armor, natural beach sediment processes can be disrupted. A recent management tool in the Salish Sea, WA, USA prioritizes efforts with high potential benefit of restoration (armor removal) or protection (preventing armor construction) to nearshore sediment supply. We conducted field sampling at 20 beaches identified as the highest or lowest priorities for restoration or protection, so we could examine local ecological and physical functions, in addition to potential landscape benefits. We sampled parameters spanning the top of the bluff to the low shore, and evaluated a total of 30 metrics including riparian vegetation, invertebrate assemblages, logs, beach wrack, fish abundance and behavior, surface epifauna and algae, beach and bluff characteristics, and sediment size and sorting. For analyses, we calculated an average score of beach function for each of four treatments: "Protect High" (unarmored, ranked as high management priority), "Protect Low" (unarmored, ranked low), "Restore High" (armored, ranked high), and "Restore Low" (armored, ranked low). Protect High and Low treatments were equivalent in local beach function, and both scored over twice as high as Restore treatments. Restore High scored only slightly higher than Restore Low, indicating a consistent degradation caused by armoring on bluffs with variable sediment source potential. Statistical models revealed that overall beach function may be largely driven by upper beach metrics including wrack, logs, and overhanging vegetation. Metrics for geomorphology and lower beach organisms were more variable, likely due to differences in geographical region and distance from the bluff. Our results indicate that beaches with natural unarmored bluffs have the highest level of localized ecological function regardless of the level of potential sediment supply, and restoring sediment supply processes at beaches with armored bluffs could double their ecological function.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.