Each patch of marsh gains elevation each year from mineral sediment trapped by stems plus buried organic matter, following the widely-used Morris et al. (2002) marsh equilibrium model: accretion is a parabolic function of inundation depth D — the depth of water over the marsh surface at mean high water:
D = MHW − E (inundation depth, clamped ≥ 0)
a(D) = k1·D − k2·D² (vertical accretion, m/yr)
dE/dt = a(D) − c (c = slow background compaction)
This produces negative feedback: a patch sitting below its optimum depth traps more sediment and rises faster, pulling it back toward equilibrium; a patch already near the optimum grows slowly. k1 scales with the sediment-supply slider (more suspended sediment ⇒ faster trapping ⇒ higher optimum accretion rate); k2 is fixed, so a(D) has a maximum sustainable rate amax = k1²/4k2.
- If sea-level rise stays below amax, the marsh surface tracks mean high water and keeps its footing indefinitely.
- Once the SLR rate exceeds amax, inundation depth keeps growing every year — accretion cannot catch up, vegetation productivity collapses past its flooding tolerance, and the parabola turns negative: the patch is reclassified as drowned mudflat.
- Patches nearer the tidal-creek edge (right side of the block) carry higher local sediment supply, so real marshes typically drown from the interior outward — reproduced here as patchy, not uniform, loss.
This threshold behaviour — a sediment-supply-dependent "tipping point" rate of sea-level rise beyond which marshes convert to open water — is the central prediction used in coastal-wetland vulnerability assessments worldwide.