A key challenge for resource and land managers is predicting the consequences of climate warming on streamflow and water
resources. During the last century in the western United States, significant reductions in snowpack and earlier snowmelt have led
to an increase in the fraction of annual streamflow during winter and...
Floods are the most frequent natural disaster, causing more loss of life and property than any other in the USA. Floods also strongly influence the structure and function of watersheds, stream channels, and aquatic ecosystems. The Pacific Northwest is particularly vulnerable to climatically driven changes in flood frequency and magnitude,...
Effects of climate change, retreating glaciers, and changing storm patterns on debris flow hazards concern
managers in the Cascade Range (USA) and mountainous areas worldwide. During an intense rainstorm in
November 2006, seven debris flows initiated from proglacial gullies of separate basins on the flanks of Mount
Rainier. Gully heads...
Debris flows have typically been viewed as two-phase mixtures of sediment and water, but in forested mountain landscapes, wood can represent a sizable fraction of total flow volume. The effects of this third phase on flow behavior are poorly understood. To evaluate whether wood can have a significant effect on...
Climate changes in the Pacific Northwest, USA, may cause both retreat of alpine glaciers and increases in the frequency and magnitude of storms delivering rainfall at high elevations absent significant snowpack, and both of these changes may affect the frequency and severity of destructive debris flows initiating on the region's...
Assessing uncertainties in hydrologic models can improve accuracy in predicting future streamflow. Here,
simulated streamflows using the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model at coarse (1/16°) and fine (1/120°)
spatial resolutions were evaluated against observed streamflows from 217 watersheds. In particular, the adequacy
of VIC simulations in groundwater- versus runoff-dominated watersheds...
Twenty years ago, the creation of a new scientific program, the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), funded by the Packard Foundation, provided the opportunity to integrate—from the outset—research, monitoring, and outreach to the public, policymakers, and managers. PISCO’s outreach efforts were initially focused primarily on sharing scientific...
Marine microbes exhibit highly varied, often non-spherical shapes that have functional significance for essential processes, including nutrient acquisition and sinking rates. There is a surprising absence of data, however, on how cell shape affects grazing, which is crucial for predicting the fate of oceanic carbon. We used synthetic spherical and...
Coastal upwelling ecosystems around the world are defined by wind-generated currents that bring deep, nutrient-rich waters to the surface ocean where they fuel exceptionally productive food webs. These ecosystems are also now understood to share a common vulnerability to ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH). In the California Current Large Marine...
A major goal of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) has been to understand the impacts of climate change and variability on the coastal ecosystems of the inner shelf of the California Current Large Marine System in particular, and other marine and even nonmarine systems more generally....