Climate change impacts on extreme water levels (WLs) at two United States Pacific Northwest estuaries are investigated using a multicomponent process-based modeling framework. The integrated impact of climate change on estuarine forcing is considered using a series of sub-models that track changes to oceanic, atmospheric, and hydrologic controls on hydrodynamics....
Pyrosomes are colonial pelagic tunicates that have fascinated marine biologists for over a century. Their name comes from the “fiery” bioluminescence that luminous organs produce at night time. Blooms of pyrosomes, identified as Pyrosoma atlanticum (Peron, 1804), have recently appeared in the North Pacific Ocean, prompting questions about environmental factors...
For many historical and contemporary experimental studies in marine biology, seawater carbonate chemistry remains a ghost factor, an uncontrolled, unmeasured, and often dynamic variable affecting experimental organisms or the treatments to which investigators subject them. We highlight how environmental variability, such as seasonal upwelling and biological respiration, drive variation in...
Abnormal, large, possibly neoplastic cells from two Ostrea /urida have been successfully labeled with tritiated thymidine, and thus, for the first time, data are available for analyzing a presumptive invertebrate proliferative disorder. Large numbers of labeled atypical cells (AC) were uniformly distributed throughout the connective tissue (CT) underlying the gills,...
This paper describes a method for measuring nearshore ocean wave characteristics with a land-based, long-period vertical seismometer. The wavemeter system has proven to be highly reliable and produces continuous wave observations at low cost. It is now operational at six Coast Guard stations along the Oregon and Washington coasts; data...
The M9 Cascadia subduction zone earthquake represents one of the most pressing natural hazard threats in the Pacific Northwest of the USA with an astonishing high 7–12% chance of occurrence by 2060, mirroring the 2011 devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Yet this region, like many other coastal communities, is...
Extreme water levels generating flooding in estuarine and coastal environments are often driven by compound events, where many individual processes such as waves, storm surge, streamflow, and tides coincide. Despite this, extreme water levels are typically modeled in isolated open-coast or estuarine environments, potentially mischaracterizing the true risk of flooding...
Despite progressive policies and continued advances in ocean management, numerous shifts associated with global changes have been observed in marine ecosystems in recent years, including warming, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation. As global change accelerates, science is needed to inform evidence-based management strategies for continued ecosystem services. Resilience management, in which...
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...
A cellular proliferative disorder that superficially resembles mammalian leukemia has been found in several species of pelecypod mollusks from Yaquina Bay, Oreg. This paper reviews the history of the disease, its cytomorphological and histopathological characteristics, molluscan oncology, and cell renewal and describes current research on the neoplastic disease of bivalve...