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Curt Storlazzi

Future Wind and Wave Projections for the NPS and USFWS-managed Islands in the Pacific Ocean GIS Data
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The Pacific Ocean is home to a number of low-lying, coastal national parks and wildlife refuges. These public lands are situated on coral reef-lined islands that are susceptible to inundation from sea-level rise and flooding during storms. Because of their low-lying nature and limited availability of space, ecosystems, cultural resources, and infrastructure on these islands are particularly vulnerable to flooding. Sea-level rise will further exacerbate the impact of storms on island parks and refuges by increasing wave-driven coastal flooding, with consequences for ecological and human communities alike. However, most assessments of future conditions at coastal national parks and refuges consider only permanent...
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Ecosystems such as coral reefs and mangroves provide an effective first line of defense against coastal hazards and represent a promising nature-based solution to adapt to sea-level rise. In many areas, coral reefs cause waves to break and lose energy, allowing for sediment to accumulate on the inshore portion of reef flats (i.e. the shallowest, flattest part of a reef) and mangroves to establish. Mangroves cause further attenuation (i.e. energy loss) waves and storm surge as water moves through roots and trunks of the trees. Together, these ecosystems provide valuable protection from coastal flooding, but is unclear how this protection may be affected by sea-level rise. An assessment of future sea-level rise vulnerability...
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Here we present surface current results from a physics-based, 3-dimensional coupled ocean-atmosphere numerical model that was generated to understand coral larval dispersal patterns in Maui Nui, Hawaii, USA. The model was used to simulate coral larval dispersal patterns from a number of existing State-managed reefs and large tracks of reefs with high coral coverage that might be good candidates for marine-protected areas (MPAs) during 8 spawning events during 2010-2013. The goal of this effort is to provide geophysical data to help provide guidance to sustain coral health in Maui Nui, Hawaii, USA. Each model output run is available as a netCDF file with self-contained attribute information. Each file name is appended...
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Spatial surveys of water column physical properties were acquired with a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) profiler for four days in February 2015 and one day in July 2015 off the north coast of the island of Tutuila, American Samoa in support of a study on the coastal circulation patterns within and in the vicinity of the National Park of American Samoa.
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