Item talk:Q160537

Climate Extremes and Ecological Impacts to California Estuaries

Estuaries are located at the interface where rivers meet the sea, creating unique ecosystems with complex physical and biological processes. Coastal wetlands provide essential ecosystem services to people, including flood protection from high tides and storm surges, commercial fisheries, carbon sequestration, improved water quality, and wildlife food and habitat. Coastal wetlands are also home to hundreds of migratory and resident wildlife species including threatened and endangered species of management concern. Wetlands also have the unique ability to increase their elevation relative to sea-level rise, therefore protecting nearby communities from flooding. In California, prolonged drought and extreme storm events are projected to increase with climate change, and when coupled with sea-level rise, the impacts could be severe. This project will leverage and analyze long-term biological and physical datasets as they relate to drought and extreme storm events to improve our understanding of how these events impact habitat persistence and resilience into the future. Specifically, this project will look at storms and warm ocean temperatures related to El Niño and the 2016 and 2017 Atmospheric River storms which resulted in record breaking floods throughout California. In addition this project will investigate how drought conditions since 2012 changed the function of the coastal wetland system. The project has 3 main objectives: (1) assess data on weather, water levels, salinity, and water quality to examine drought and storm conditions in estuaries; (2) examine the relationship between physical and wetland biological data; and (3) develop a systems model to help inform how tidal wetland processes are impacted during these types of climatic events, a key management question identified by resource managers. This topic has been identified as a key management concern and the results from this project will help reduce uncertainty about extreme event impacts. This information will inform on-the-ground decision making by federal, state, and local land managers throughout the coastal zone.