Skip to main content

Person

Sinead M Borchert

thumbnail
Barrier islands provide important ecosystem services, including storm protection and erosion control to the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, and tourism (Barbier and others, 2011; Feagin and others, 2010). These islands tend to be dynamic due to their location along the estuarine-marine interface. Besides gradual changes caused by constant forces, such as currents and tides, barrier islands face numerous threats including hurricanes, accelerated sea-level rise, oil spills, and anthropogenic impacts (Pilkey and Cooper, 2014). These threats are likely to influence the future of barrier islands in the latter part of the 21st century, especially as climate-related threats to coastal areas are expected to increase...
Coastal wetlands provide many valuable benefits to people and wildlife, including critical habitat, improved water quality, reduced flooding impacts, and protected coastlines. However, in the 21st century, accelerated sea-level rise and coastal development are expected to greatly alter coastal landscapes across the globe. The future of coastal wetlands is uncertain, challenging coastal environmental managers to develop conservation strategies that will increase the resilience of these valuable ecosystems to change and preserve the benefits they provide. One strategy for preparing for the effects of sea-level rise is to ensure that there is space available for coastal wetlands to migrate inland. In a recent study,...
thumbnail
A barrier island habitat prediction model was used to forecast barrier island habitats (for example, beach, dune, intertidal marsh, and woody vegetation) for Dauphin Island, Alabama, based on potential island configurations associated with a variety of restoration measures and varying future conditions of storminess and sea-levels. In this study, we loosely coupled a habitat model framework with decadal hydrodynamic geomorphic model outputs to forecast habitats for 2 potential future conditions related to storminess (that is, "medium" storminess and "high" storminess based on storm climatology data) and 4 sea-level scenarios (that is, a "low" increase in sea level 0.3 m by around 2030 and 2050 and 1.0 m by around...
thumbnail
Coastal wetland ecosystems are expected to migrate landward in response to accelerated sea-level rise. However, due to differences in topography and coastal urbanization extent, estuaries vary in their ability to accommodate wetland migration. The landward movement of wetlands requires suitable conditions, such as a gradual slope and land free of urban development. Urban barriers can constrain migration and result in wetland loss (coastal squeeze). For future-focused conservation planning purposes, there is a pressing need to quantify and compare the potential for wetland landward movement and coastal squeeze. For 41 estuaries in the northern Gulf of Mexico (i.e., the USA gulf coast), we quantified and compared...
thumbnail
These data represent low-lying lands and intertidal lands on Dauphin Island, Alabama, USA for January 2015. These data were delineated using airborne lidar elevation data, in situ elevation observations, lidar metadata, and tide gauge information. We applied Monte Carlo simulations to incorporate uncertainty into a digital elevation model and produce probabilistic outputs with regards to elevation relative to tide and water levels. Specifically, these include three error treatments, including leaving error untreated, and treating error via simulating the propagation of error using Monte Carlo simulations with error and bias estimates from the lidar metadata and site-specific Real-time Kinematic Global Position System...
View more...
ScienceBase brings together the best information it can find about USGS researchers and offices to show connections to publications, projects, and data. We are still working to improve this process and information is by no means complete. If you don't see everything you know is associated with you, a colleague, or your office, please be patient while we work to connect the dots. Feel free to contact sciencebase@usgs.gov.