BackgroundAccumulating evidence shows that the planet is warming as a response to human emissions of greenhouse gases. Strategies of adaptation to climate change will require quantitative projections of how altered regional patterns of temperature, precipitation and sea level could cascade to provoke local impacts such as modified water supplies, increasing risks of coastal flooding, and growing challenges to sustainability of native species.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe linked a series of models to investigate responses of California's San Francisco Estuary-Watershed (SFEW) system to two contrasting scenarios of climate change. Model outputs for scenarios of fast and moderate warming are presented as 2010–2099 projections of nine indicators of changing climate, hydrology and habitat quality. Trends of these indicators measure rates of: increasing air and water temperatures, salinity and sea level; decreasing precipitation, runoff, snowmelt contribution to runoff, and suspended sediment concentrations; and increasing frequency of extreme environmental conditions such as water temperatures and sea level beyond the ranges of historical observations.Conclusions/SignificanceMost of these environmental indicators change substantially over the 21st century, and many would present challenges to natural and managed systems. Adaptations to these changes will require flexible planning to cope with growing risks to humans and the challenges of meeting demands for fresh water and sustaining native biota. Programs of ecosystem rehabilitation and biodiversity conservation in coastal landscapes will be most likely to meet their objectives if they are designed from considerations that include: (1) an integrated perspective that river-estuary systems are influenced by effects of climate change operating on both watersheds and oceans; (2) varying sensitivity among environmental indicators to the uncertainty of future climates; (3) inevitability of biological community changes as responses to cumulative effects of climate change and other drivers of habitat transformations; and (4) anticipation and adaptation to the growing probability of ecosystem regime shifts.
Vertical gradational structures develop as sand infiltrates into static gravel beds. Understanding the vertical distribution of interstitial sand deposits will improve predictions of ecological suitability and hyporheic hydrodynamics. A series of flume experiments was performed to investigate fine infiltration processes. Four sand distributions were introduced into flows over gravel beds. After each experiment, bed cores were extracted and analysed in vertical layers to examine the gradational trends with depth. Vertical trends of fine content were highly sensitive to the relative grain-size distributions of the gravel bed and the introduced sand. For experiments with d 15gravel /d 85sand ratios 15AE4 and larger unimpeded static percolation was observed, where sand filled the voids relatively uniformly from the bottom of the gravel layer to the top. Experiments with ratios 10AE6 and smaller bridged. Sand clogged a thin layer of gravel pores near the bed surface, precluding subsequent infiltration. Interstitial sand deposits fined with depth of penetration for all experiments which was the result of three distinct but overlapping processes. (i) Granular sorting: As particles fell through the substrate, smaller material preferentially passed through the voids deeper into the gravel. (ii) Bed-load sorting: Size segregation occurs in the wake of the leading bed form as smaller particles saltate further and settle first. (iii) Hydraulic sorting: Smaller sand was transported preferentially as suspended load filling the deep voids of the furthest flume positions downstream. Finally, when the experiments that formed a bridge layer were replicated with higher bed shear stresses, less interstitial sand deposition was observed. Higher shear stresses transported coarse particles downstream more efficiently causing bridge layers to form earlier and allowing less time for suspended load to settle into the deeper substrate pores before the pathways were closed.
The quantity of suspended sediment in an estuary is regulated either by transport, where energy or time needed to suspend sediment is limiting, or by supply, where the quantity of erodible sediment is limiting. This paper presents a hypothesis that suspended-sediment concentration (SSC) in estuaries can suddenly decrease when the threshold from transport to supply regulation is crossed as an erodible sediment pool is depleted. This study was motivated by a statistically significant 36% step decrease in SSC in San Francisco Bay from water years 1991-1998 to 1999-2007. A quantitative conceptual model of an estuary with an erodible sediment pool and transport or supply regulation of sediment transport is developed. Model results confirm that, if the regulation threshold was crossed in 1999, SSC would decrease rapidly after water year 1999 as observed. Estuaries with a similar history of a depositional sediment pulse followed by erosion may experience sudden clearing.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.