Sea level rise is reshaping the coasts, allowing coastal habitats such as tidal marshes to migrate inland. To predict where changes will occur, it is critical to understand the factors that influence land cover transition. Here, we test the influence of land cover type on land cover transition. We hypothesized that marsh migration may vary by upland land cover type, due to dominant plant species’ differences in salinity and inundation tolerance. Additionally, the response of people may make specific land cover types more likely to be protected from transition. We measured land cover change in high resolution aerial imagery over the relatively short period of 2009 to 2017 in coastal Somerset County, Maryland. In logistic models of land cover transition, we found that ‘agricultural land’ and ‘scrub shrub wetland / forested wetland’ cover classes were more likely to transition to ‘emergent wetland’ than ‘forest/scrub shrub’ or ‘urban or built-up land’ cover classes, after controlling for elevation and distance to shore, two well-known predictors of marsh migration. Over only 8 years, loss of upland area in the county totaled 6.1 km², of which 5.7 km² was agricultural land. This represents a loss of over 2% of the farmland in the county, the majority of which converted to emergent wetland during the study period.

海平面上升正在重塑海岸，使潮汐沼泽等沿海生境向内陆迁移。为了预测变化将发生在哪里，了解影响土地覆盖过渡的因素至关重要。在这里，我们测试了土地覆被类型对土地覆被过渡的影响。我们推测，由于优势植物物种在盐度和淹没耐受性方面的差异，沼泽迁徙可能因陆地覆盖类型而异。此外，人们的反应可能会使特定的土地覆盖类型更有可能受到保护而免受过渡。我们在2009年至2017年的较短时间内测量了马里兰州萨默塞特郡沿海地区的高分辨率航空影像中的土地覆盖变化。在土地覆盖过渡的逻辑模型中，我们发现，“农业用地”和“灌木丛湿地/森林湿地”覆盖类别比“森林/灌木丛”或“城市或建筑用地”覆盖类别更可能过渡到“新兴湿地”海拔和到海岸的距离，这是沼泽迁移的两个著名预测因子。在仅8年的时间里，该县的旱地损失总计6.1公里²，其中5.7 km ²是农用地。这代表了该县超过2％的耕地流失，在研究期间，其中大部分已转变为紧急湿地。