San Francisco Bay Estuary Priority Ecosystem Study
Phytoplankton populations in estuaries such as San Francisco Bay, California, are influenced by a host of local stresses that mask plankton responses to global climate change. The above bar graph shows the months that peak chlorophyll concentrations occurred in 116 coastal water bodies in the northern temperate zone. The distribution is surprisingly even from March through September, although, peaks occurred throughout the year. The distribution shows no characteristic single seasonal pattern, a large departure from the regular seasonal pattern of plants on land that is tightly tied to the annual climate cycle (The graph is a modified version of figure 4 from Cloern and Jassby, 2008).
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Diverse organic and inorganic contaminants that vary
widely in their environmental behavior, sources, and toxicity enter the
San Francisco Bay estuary. Toxic substances enter the estuary in agricultural
and urban runoff and in discharges from municipal wastewater facilities
and industries. The study focuses on the movement, fate, and effect of
contaminants from a variety of agricultural, industrial, and urban sources,
such as pesticides and toxic trace elements, and on the effects of the
highly varying hydrologic conditions in river--estuarine environments.
Scientists are developing an approach to characterize the distribution
of contamination and the resulting ecological effects that will be applied
in similar environments elsewhere.
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Upcoming Publications
- Perils of correlating CUSUM-transformed variables to infer ecological relationships (Breton et al. 2006, Glibert 2010): Cloern, J.E., and others, a., Limnology and Oceangraophy (IN PRESS).
- Population dynamics of Corbicula fluminea (Müller, 1774) in mesohaline and oligohaline habitats--Invasion success in a southern Europe estuary: Franco, J.N., Ceia, F.R., Patrício, J., Modesto, V., Thompson, J., Marques, J.C., and Neto, J.M., Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2011.07.014 (IN PRESS).
Newly Published
- Explaining differences between bioaccumulation measurements in laboratory and field data through use of a probabilistic modeling approach: Selck, H., Drouillard, K., Eisenreich, K., Koelmans, A.A., Palmqvist, A., Ruus, A., Salvito, D., Schultz, I., Stewart, R., Weisbrod, A., van den Brink, N.W., and van den Heuvel-Greve, M., 2011, Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, doi:10.1002/ieam.217 (Advanced Web release).
- Projected evolution of California's San Francisco Bay-Delta-River system in a century of climate change: Cloern, J.E., Knowles, N., Brown, L.R., Cayan, D., Dettinger, M.D., Morgan, T.L., Schoellhamer, D.H., Stacey, M.T., van der Wegen, M., Wagner, R.W., and Jassby, A.D., 2011, PLoS ONE, v. 6, no. 9, p. e24465, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024465.
Additional USGS Information about San Francisco Bay
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