This paper describes calibration methods for models of agricultural production and water use in which economic variables can directly interact with hydrologic network models or other biophysical system models.
Sea level rise, large-scale flooding, and new conveyance arrangements for water exports may increase future water salinity for local agricultural production in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.
A multi-proxy approach was used to examine the geomorphic dynamics and environmental history of an upper deltaic floodplain tract in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California.
The geochemical history of an upper deltaic plain pending tidal wetland restoration was reconstructed to assess remobilization of redoxsensitive constituents in sediment, identify depositional processes promoting geochemical retention, and determine the extent of contamination with Hg, As, Pb, Cu, and Zn.
We sampled freshwater suspended particulate organic matter (POM) to determine its carbon and nitrogen stable isotope composition and collected co-located water chemistry data in California's Sacramento—San Joaquin Delta from sites on the Mokelumne and Cosumnes rivers.
An ecosystem in freefall, a shrinking water supply for cities and agriculture, an antiquated network of failure-prone levees—this is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the major hub of California's water system.
Anthropogenic accommodation space, or that space in the Delta that lies below sea level and is filled neither with sediment nor water, serves as a useful measure of the regional consequences of Delta subsidence and sea level rise. Microbial oxidation and compaction of organic-rich soils due to farming activity is the primary cause of Delta subsidence. During the period 1900-2000, subsidence created approximately 2.5 billion cubic meters of anthropogenic accommodation space in the Delta.
One of California's most remarkable wetlands, Suisun Marsh is the largest tidal marsh on the West Coast and a major feature of the San Francisco Estuary.
The delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) is a small and relatively obscure fish that has recently risen to become a major focus of environmental concern in California. It was formally abundant in the low-salinity and freshwater habitats of the northeastern San Francisco Estuary, but is now listed as threatened under the Federal and California State Endangered Species Acts. In the decade following the listings scientific understanding has increased substantially, yet several key aspects of its biology and ecological relationships within the highly urbanized estuary remain uncertain.
