Assessing Marsh response from sea-level rise applying local site conditions: Humboldt Bay Wetlands

The broad goal of our research was to use site-specific data to develop local and regionally applicable models that inform management of tidal wetlands within Humboldt Bay. Our overarching question was: how vulnerable are Humboldt Bay tidal marshes to different rates of SLR. This question was addressed with three broad objectives: (1) Assess past patterns in sedimentation to inform current SLR projections. This was accomplished by radioisotope dating of stratigraphic cores. (2) Measure baseline conditions in the tidal marshes. We characterized physical and biological properties at all study sites including topography, accretion rates, emergent vegetation, water level, salinity, and water temperature. These results are summarized in the main document, (3) Model tidal marsh elevation and habitat change under three SLR scenarios. We evaluated the degree of marsh habitat change under low, mid, and high SLR scenarios with the WARMER model (Swanson et al., 2014) for all study sites