Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Hood Canal Hypoxia
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Date
2015
Authors
Schandl, Maria
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Puget Sound can be found nestled in the northwestern corner of the United States. Puget
Sound is the only home I have ever known. It is a place of expansive natural heritage with its
evergreen forests, mountain ranges, rocky coastlines, rivers, and waterfalls. With this myriad of
habitats, Puget Sound sustains thousands of wildlife species. However, the human impact is
encroaching on the Sound and the natural processes that occur in the region. Over the past two
centuries, human activities such as land clearance and fossil fuel burning have spurred an altered
global climatic regime for the 21st century. Model forecasts suggest that global climate change
will spur increases in ocean temperature and sea level as well as changes in freshwater flow
magnitude and timing. Models also suggest that these changes in physical processes will impact
biological processes. In particular, primary production in marine settings is expected to increase
(Rabalais et al., 2009). This means that phytoplankton populations will expand, potentially
leading to intensified hypoxia occurrences both in frequency and scope.
Hood Canal is one of the multiple estuaries that comprise the Sound. I have chosen to
focus exclusively on Hood Canal when available data exists because this region of the Sound
experiences the most intense hypoxic conditions relative to the Sound’s other estuaries. Estuaries
can be characterized as areas where fresh river flows meet ocean waters (Newton, 2003). Some
data and information discussed is specific to Puget Sound as a whole rather than exclusively to
Hood Canal. I include data and/or analyses specific to the broader context of Puget Sound since
this is the existing data most closely related to Hood Canal when Hood Canalspecific
data is
unavailable and/or nonexistent. Additionally, an information gap exists in terms of the future
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outlook of Hood Canal hypoxia. There is a lack of quantitative projections of the frequency and
magnitude of Hood Canal hypoxia. Past and current studies have yet to synthesize how the
factors that contribute to hypoxia will change in the face of climate change in order to concretely
predict the trajectory of hypoxia in Hood Canal.
In this paper, I synthesize some of the most critical factors that contribute to Hood Canal
hypoxia, consider how these factors will be altered by climate change, and speculate what this
will mean for the future of hypoxia in Hood Canal. The critical factors I examine are snowmelt
timing and streamflow, ocean acidification, water temperature, salinity and density, and sea
level.
Description
31 pages
Keywords
Hypoxia, Puget Sound, Hood Canal, Human impacts, Ocean acidification, Snowmelt, Streamflow, Sea level, Salinity