Developing a vulnerability framework to identity estuarine systems at higher risk of water quality change under future land use and climate
I am developing a vulnerability framework to identify estuaries at higher risk of water quality degradation in the future (e.g., 2050.)
The vulnerability is composed of three components:
- the exposure (e.g., magnitude and extent of exposure to climate change and land-use impacts)
- sensitivity (e.g., response of the system when exposed to climate and land-use induced-stress)
- adaptive capacity (e.g., potential ability and opportunities to decrease the effect of the exposure and sensitivity of the system.)
The vulnerability framework will be developed by combining heterogeneous data sources (e.g., runoff-driven estuarine nutrient loads computed using the U.S. EPA Spreadsheet Tool for Estimating Pollutant Load, ecological and socio-economic data).
Key-words: vulnerability, estuaries, water quality, land use, climate change
Vulnerability framework to assess of estuarine vulnerability to future water quality change
To assess the exposure, the U.S. EPA Spreadsheet Tool for Estimating Pollutant Loads (STEPL) is used. This parsimonious model has minimal data requirements and is less computational expensive. This model estimates nutrient loading (e.g., TP and TN) based on the runoff volume and runoff pollutant concentrations determined as a function of precipitation and land use distribution.
Future annual and seasonal nutrient loads will be computed from 2040 to 2060 with the base year of 2050 and will be compared to the annual and seasonal historical nutrient loads for the period of 1990-2020 for each estuary in CONUS, respectively.
Because of the uncertainty related to projected data, 1000 land-use data simulations (e.g., (e.g., Radeloff et al., 2012 and twenty downscaled climate models computed with the Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs methods (Abatzoglou and Brown, 2012) are used to encompass the different possible future scenarios.