Levee Decisions and Sustainability for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

Suddeth, Robyn Jean

doi:10.15447/sfews.2010v8iss2art3

Cited by 35 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…A major consequence of subsidence is the increasing risk of levee failures that threaten the very farmland and water-conveyance systems the levees are maintained to protect (Mount and Twiss 2005;Florscheim and Dettinger 2007;Lund et al 2010;Suddeth 2010). Since 1930, there have been approximately 100 levee breaches (163 in the last 100 years).…”

Section: Implications For Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions and Econmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications for Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions and Economics of a Changing Agricultural Mosaic in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta

Deverel¹,

Jacobs²,

Lucero³

et al. 2017

SFEWS

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We quantified the greenhouse-gas (GHG) emission and economic implications of alternative crop and wetland mosaics on a Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta island: Staten Island. Using existing GHG fluxes measurements for the Delta and biogeochemical models, we estimated GHG emissions for a range of scenarios, including the status quo, modified groundwater management, and incorporating rice and managed wetlands. For current land uses, emissions were predicted to vary greatly (48,000 to 105,000 t CO 2 -e yr -1 ) with varying groundwater depth. GHG emissions were highest when water depth was 120 cm, the typical depth for a Delta island, and lowest if water table depth was shallowest (60 cm). In the alternate land-use scenarios, we simulated wetlands and rice cultivation in areas of highest organic-matter soils, greatest subsidence, and GHG emissions. For each scenario, we analyzed economic implications for the land-owner by determining profit changes relative to the status quo. We spatially assigned areas for rice and wetlands, and then allowed the Delta Agricultural Production (DAP) model to optimize the allocation of other crops to maximize profit. The scenario that included wetlands decreased profits 79% relative to the status quo but reduced GHG emissions by 43,000 t CO 2 -e yr -1 (57% reduction). When mixtures of rice and wetlands were introduced, farm profits decreased 16%, and the GHG emission reduction was 33,000 t CO 2 -e yr -1 (44% reduction). When rice was cultivated on 38% of the island, profit increased 12% and emissions were 22,000 t CO 2 -e yr -1 lower than baseline emissions (30% reduction). Conversion to a mosaic of wetlands and crops including rice could substantially reduce overall GHG emissions of cultivated lands in the Delta without greatly affecting profitability.

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Section: Implications For Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions and Econmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications for Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions and Economics of a Changing Agricultural Mosaic in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta

Deverel¹,

Jacobs²,

Lucero³

et al. 2017

SFEWS

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“…Subsidence was accelerated by soil oxidation and compaction from agriculture, reducing elevation as much as eight m below sea level in some cases (Weir 1950;Mount and Twiss 2005). These polders are vulnerable to flooding when levees collapse because o poor building materials, age, floods, earthquakes, and sea level rise (Thompson 1957, p. 19;Suddeth et al 2010;Suddeth 2011). The area potentially affected by flooding in the Delta is substantial: approximately 140,000 hectares of land are at or above sea level, and the area of vulnerability will increase over the next several decades with sea level rise.…”

Section: Evaluating the Aquatic Habitat Potential Of Flooded Polders mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several have been abandoned because it proved uneconomical to resuscitate them, or because they were targeted as environmental restoration projects. The largest of these include Franks Tract, Mildred Island, and Liberty Island (Logan 1990;Suddeth et al 2010). The physical habitat conditions and biota of currently abandoned flooded polders in the Delta are varied, but the evolution from polder to flooded habitat is poorly understood, and has not been methodically studied.…”

Section: Evaluating the Aquatic Habitat Potential Of Flooded Polders mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Aquatic Habitat Potential of Flooded Polders in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta

Durand¹

2017

SFEWS

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“…The 2010 earthquake in Baja California, Mexico, for example, resulted in extensive irrigation canal damage (Stenner et al, 2010;Wilson et al, 2011). Additionally, the vulnerability of California's Sacramento San Joaquin Delta is largely attributed to local seismic activity coupled with an aging levee system, putting Delta agricultural at risk (Suddeth et al, 2010). Remote sensing has been utilized to monitor farm infrastructure -specifically irrigation canals -after earthquake events (Guo et al, 2011;Irwansyah, 2010), providing a useful tool for agricultural decision making.…”

Section: Additional Framework Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food, water, and fault lines: Remote sensing opportunities for earthquake-response management of agricultural water

Rodriguez

Ustin

Sandoval-Solís

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

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Earthquakes often cause destructive and unpredictable changes that can affect local hydrology (e.g. groundwater elevation or reduction) and thus disrupt land uses and human activities. Prolific agricultural regions overlie seismically active areas, emphasizing the importance to improve our understanding and monitoring of hydrologic and agricultural systems following a seismic event. A thorough data collection is necessary for adequate postearthquake crop management response; however, the large spatial extent of earthquake's impact makes challenging the collection of robust data sets for identifying locations and magnitude of these impacts. Observing hydrologic responses to earthquakes is not a novel concept, yet there is a lack of methods and tools for assessing earthquake's impacts upon the regional hydrology and agricultural systems. The objective of this paper is to describe how remote sensing imagery, methods and tools allow detecting crop responses and damage incurred after earthquakes because a change in the regional hydrology. Many remote sensing datasets are long archived with extensive coverage and with well-documented methods to assess plant-water relations. We thus connect remote sensing of plant water relations to its utility in agriculture using a post-earthquake agrohydrologic remote sensing (PEARS) framework; specifically in agro-hydrologic relationships associated with recent earthquake events that will lead to improved water management.© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords:Agro-hydrology Disaster management Monitoring Plant-water relations Post-earthquake agrohydrologic remote sensing (PEARS) Remote sensing Background, scope & needEarthquake events threaten food security, resource management and human life, and are observed to be steadily increasing (Ellsworth, 2013). As observed earthquake events continue to increase, it is important to explore and improve response and recovery strategies. Infrastructural damages, especially in urban environments, are at the forefront of research in remote sensing of earthquake-associated damage. Agricultural environments also face catastrophic impacts, often due to adverse hydrologic behavior following the event. The earthquake-water linkage poses particular threats to agricultural productivity, yet difficulty lies in predicting the location, destructiveness, and extent of damage. While effects of earthquake-induced hydrologic changes on crops remain largely unexplored, remote sensing of crop water relations provide a suite of tools to monitor responses and to mitigate crop loss. Remote sensing can address these challenges with archived imagery that has extensive spatial coverage. There are conceptual models that explicitly walk through remote sensing in disaster management (Joyce et al., 2009b) and remote sensing of post-earthquake urban damage (Eguchi et al., 2003) -leaving a gap at the interface of post-earthquake remote sensing of agricultural impacts. We therefore draw attention to current research in understanding earthquake impacts on agric...

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Levee Decisions and Sustainability for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

Cited by 35 publications

References 34 publications

Implications for Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions and Economics of a Changing Agricultural Mosaic in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta

Implications for Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions and Economics of a Changing Agricultural Mosaic in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta

Evaluating the Aquatic Habitat Potential of Flooded Polders in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta

Food, water, and fault lines: Remote sensing opportunities for earthquake-response management of agricultural water

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