Recent studies of sea level rise in San Francisco Bay have indicated that the majority of tidal marshes surrounding the Bay are likely to lose marsh plant communities by 2100 because natural sediment accretion rates will not keep pace with sea level rise. This potential loss of tidal marsh habitat, coupled with the requirement that 40% of the material dredged from San Francisco Bay be put to beneficial reuse, suggests that dredged material may provide a valuable resource to augment sediment supply to mudflats and marshes in the Bay. However, little information currently exists on where waves and currents transport sediment within San Francisco Bay following an in-Bay dredged material placement. A three-dimensional hydrodynamic, wave, and sediment transport model was applied to examine sediment dispersal throughout the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. One focus of the sediment transport modeling effort was to examine the sediment dispersal following dredged material placements. The model was applied to evaluate sediment dispersal away from two currently designated in-Bay sediment placement sites and two nearby sites adjacent to marsh areas
Date
2014-06-11
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