Impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita Le cause e le responsabilita dei cambiamenti climatici sono state trattate sul numero di ottobre della rivista Cda. Approfondiamo l’argomento presentando il documento: “Cambiamenti climatici 2007: impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita” votato ad aprile 2007 dal secondo gruppo di lavoro del Comitato Intergovernativo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Si tratta del secondo di tre documenti che compongono il quarto rapporto sui cambiamenti climatici.

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Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

Morphodynamics of Holocene salt marshes: a review sketch from the Atlantic and Southern North Sea coasts of Europe

https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1332&context=occ_facarticles

Environmental Impacts of Dredging and Other Sediment Disturbances on Corals: A Review

Organic matter (OM) is a ubiquitous constituent of natural waters quantifiable at very low levels using fluorescence spectroscopy. This technique has recognized potential in a range of applications where the ability to monitor water quality in real time is desirable, such as in water treatment systems. This study used PARAFAC to characterize a large (n = 1479) and diverse excitation emission matrix (EEM) data set from six recycled water treatment plants in Australia, for which sources of variability included geography, season, treatment processes, pH and fluorometer settings. Five components were identified independently in four or more plants, none of which were generated during the treatment process nor were typically entirely removed. PARAFAC scores could be obtained from EEMs by simple regression. The results have important implications for online monitoring of OM fluorescence in treatment plants, affecting choices regarding experimental design, instrumentation and the optimal wavelengths for tracking...

Organic Matter Fluorescence in Municipal Water Recycling Schemes: Toward a Unified PARAFAC Model

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20040084683/downloads/20040084683.pdf

Using MODIS Terra 250 m imagery to map concentrations of total suspended matter in coastal waters

Background: Accumulating 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 Findings: We 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/Significance: Most of these environmental indicators change substantially over the 21 st 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.

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Projected Evolution of California's San Francisco Bay-Delta-River System in a Century of Climate Change

Geophysical time series often contain missing data, which prevents analysis with many signal processing and multivariate tools. A modification of singular spectrum analysis for time series with missing data is developed and successfully tested with synthetic and actual incomplete time series of suspended-sediment concentration from San Francisco Bay. This method also can be used to low pass filter incomplete time series.

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Singular spectrum analysis for time series with missing data

The mechanisms that resuspend bottom sediments in Hillsborough Bay, a shallow, microtidal, subtropical estuary in West-central Florida, were determined by analysing hydrodynamic and suspended-solids concentration data collected during several instrument deployments made in 1990 and 1991. Large vessels in a dredged ship channel can generate forced solitary long waves that cause large water velocities and sediment resuspension at the study sites. An experiment was conducted with a trawler that resuspended bottom sediments, and some of the resuspended sediments remained in suspension for at least 8 h. A secondary impact of vessel-generated long waves and trawling is that sediments that are resuspended and newly deposited are more susceptible to resuspension by tidal currents than undisturbed bottom sediments. Natural sediment resuspension by wind waves and tidal current is less frequent or of smaller magnitude than anthropogenic sediment resuspension. The annual mass of sediment resuspended by vessel-generated long waves is estimated to be one order of magnitude greater than the annual mass of sediment resuspended by wind waves generated by winter storms.

Anthropogenic Sediment Resuspension Mechanisms in a Shallow Microtidal Estuary

A central challenge of coastal ecology is sorting out the interacting spatial and temporal components of environmental variability that combine to drive changes in phytoplankton biomass For 2 decades, we have combined sustained observation and experimentation in South San Francisco Bay (SSFB) with numerical modeling analyses to search for general principles that define phyto- plankton population responses to physical dynamics characteristic of shallow, nutrient-rich coastal waters having complex bathymetry and influenced by tides, wind and river flow This study is the latest contribution where we investigate light-limited phytoplankton growth using a numerical model, by modeling turbidity as a function of suspended sediment concentrations (SSC) The goal was to explore the sensitivity of estuarine phytoplankton dynamics to spatial and temporal variations in turbidity, and to synthesize outcomes of simulation experiments into a new conceptual framework for defining the combinations of physical-biological forcings that promote or preclude development of phytoplankton blooms in coastal ecosystems The 3 main conclusions of this study are: (1) The timing of the wind with semidiurnal tides and the spring-neap cycle can significantly enhance spring- neap variability in turbidity and phytoplankton biomass; (2) Fetch is a significant factor potentially affecting phytoplankton dynamics by enhancing and/or creating spatial variability in turbidity; and (3) It is possible to parameterize the combined effect of the processes influencing turbidity —and thus affecting potential phytoplankton bloom development —with 2 indices for vertical and horizontal clearing of the water column Our conceptual framework is built around these 2 indices, providing a means to determine under what conditions a phytoplankton bloom can occur, and whether a poten- tial bloom is only locally supported or system-wide in scale This conceptual framework provides a tool for exploring the inherent light climate attributes of shallow estuarine ecosystems and helps determine susceptibility to the harmful effects of nutrient enrichment

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Effects of spatial and temporal variability of turbidity on phytoplankton blooms

Human activities within a watershed, such as agriculture, urbanization, and dam building, may affect the sediment yield from the watershed. Because the equilibrium geomorphic form of an estuary is dependent in part on the sediment supply from the watershed, anthropogenic activities within the watershed have the potential to affect estuary geomorphology. The Sacramento River drains the northern half of California’s Central Valley and is the primary source of sediment to San Francisco Bay. In this paper, it is shown that the delivery of suspended-sediment from the Sacramento River to San Francisco Bay has decreased by about one-half during the period 1957 to 2001. Many factors may be contributing to the trend in sediment yield, including the depletion of erodible sediment from hydraulic mining in the late 1800s, trapping of sediment in reservoirs, riverbank protection, altered land-uses (such as agriculture, grazing, urbanization, and logging), and levees. This finding has implications for planned tidal wetland restoration activities around San Francisco Bay, where an adequate sediment supply will be needed to build subsided areas to elevations typical of tidal wetlands as well as to keep pace with projected sea-level rise. In a broader context, the study underscores the need to address anthropogenic impacts on watershed sediment yield when considering actions such as restoration within downstream depositional areas.

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David H. Schoellhamer

Papers

Projected Evolution of California's San Francisco Bay-Delta-River System in a Century of Climate Change

Singular spectrum analysis for time series with missing data

Anthropogenic Sediment Resuspension Mechanisms in a Shallow Microtidal Estuary

Effects of spatial and temporal variability of turbidity on phytoplankton blooms

Trends in the Sediment Yield of the Sacramento River, California, 1957 - 2001