Interest is expanding for the potential role of estuaries, particularly seagrass and salt marsh habitats, to sequester carbon, mitigate ocean acidification, and support abundant fisheries. The important functions of estuaries are part of a broader set of ecosystem services, or benefits to humans, which are regulated by ocean and watershed...
Coastal communities in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) are rapidly engaging with the idea that hazards and environmental pressures are changing and may be characteristically different in the near future. This has led to a need for scientific knowledge and tools that can help coastal communities prepare and build resilience...
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the production of poplar biomass grown under four management conditions in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the U.S.A. was conducted. While the extraction of fossil fuels and the subsequent generation of energy have environmental impacts, the alternative of extracting poplar biomass also has impacts...
Estimates of potential carbon (C) storage can be used to constrain predictions of future carbon sequestration and to understand the degree to which disturbances, both natural aid anthropogenic, affect C storage. An upper bound on C storage in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the United States was estimated using field...
The relative contributions of sea level rise (SLR) and increasing extra-tropical storminess to the frequency with which waves attack coastal features is assessed with a simple total water level (TWL) model. For the coast of the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) over the period of wave-buoy observations (~30 years) wave height...
Coastal flooding and erosion are major concerns for low lying coastal communities -- particularly in light of accelerated sea level rise and climate change. To improve quantitative understanding of the physical drivers of both flooding and coastal landscape change, this dissertation explores coastal morphodynamics bridging the land-sea interface on modally...
Understanding sandbar dynamics and variability is integral to developing a predictive capacity for nearshore flows, sediment transport, morphological change, and ultimately for determining coastline exposure to damaging storm waves. Here we report on a nearshore bathymetric data set from the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) that stretches from Point Grenville, Washington...
The global cryosphere, defined as the world’s ice and snow covered regions, is a crucial water source for society and ecosystem functions, as well as an important regulator of the earth’s energy budget. Melt from glaciers and seasonal snow cover provides water for more than a sixth of the world’s...
The management of federal forest lands in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region changed in early 1990s when the
Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) was adopted with the primary goal to protect old-growth forest and associated
species. A major decline in timber harvest followed, extending an earlier downward trend. The historic and...
Coastal sand dunes and beaches offer a variety of ecosystem services such as coastal protection, sand stabilization, species conservation, and recreation. However, the management and balance of ecosystem services offered by dunes and beaches is challenging when ecosystem services interact across the landscape. Management focusing only on one ecosystem service...