Talk:Snohomish Estuary Restoration Effects on Temperature, Salinity, and Tides

Meeting Notes

Notes from first meeting (Pcereghino (talk)):

Subsided farmland creates a greater-than-historical tidal volume. This results in high velocity at breach site and downstream in distributaires. Example is doubling of velocity downstream of Qwuloolt Restoration.
2019 county updated lidar, 2020 updated sonar bathymetric survey.
Phase 1 assemble and calibrate updated hydrodynamic model, Phase 2 is for the temperature model and full restoration model run, phase 3 is for climate change runs.
9 years of existing water quality data with from a data logger array (CWS data).
Salinity has migrated upstream following restoration.
Temperature and salinity affect density, which affects hydrodynamic model performance. Temperature has to date been deactivated in modeling delta restoration outcomes, because of focus on habitat and water level.
Ponding between flood tides may result in temperature fluctuation in tidal areas that may have cumulative effects on heating. In addition heat accumulation on exposed intertidal sediments can affect temperature flux. The project will add a module that will consider accumulation of heat in exposed intertidal sediments (mud flats). Only with this module can we predict temperature. This is the significant advance of the model architecture.
The model domain includes upstream to the end of tidal influence (beyond French Slough). Temperature data may be available from Ecology sensors to represent river temperature.
LIDAR as a modeling basis can create some complexity by either including or not including vegetation volume in the model. LIDAR data were flown in 2019 in summer (7/31/19; leaf on) and includes the full floodplain width (Leonetti pers. coms.)
A large volume of QAQC has been completed on CWS data (6.5 million records).
In looking at salinity, the river flow regime and year-to-year variation may be significant, and can create the appearance of change over time. Similarly temperature regime has year-to-year variation.

Questions

Notes by Pcereghino (talk) during initial meeting:

What does change in temperature/salinity/velocity matter for future restoration? How do these effects align with the outputs of the analysis?
- how do we interpret "relevance to VSP parameters"? We are operating under a operating hypothesis that over a one-year period, habitat service value migrates around the estuary, where different life histories, of different species obtain benefits from different locations over time (perhaps summarized as some kind of cumulative outmigration carrying capacity? service acre years?) This shifting habitat has been hypothesized to be driven in part by temperature, both through evacuation of marsh of juvenile chinook by increasing temperatures, and summer cool-water refuge in freshwater tidal swamp.
- Parameter Bins - Can we identify threshold effects based on literature that indicate likely (based on published literature) impacts to service provision? Are salinity categories (oligohaline, mesohaline, etc..) relevant to VSPs. What are the relevant bins that define a "temperature or salinity portfolio" (sum of acres over time)?
- Time period - Will the model be designed to easily evaluate "habitat suitability" (and threshold events) for key life stages of species of interest over an outmigration density curve? Are the edges of the curve important for life history diversity and resilience, and this should be considered as a unique component?
- How does this result in potential quantification of restoration benefits/impacts that occur outside of the restored floodplain footprint.
Can we serve stitched topo-bathymetry including the full floodplain width? How does this product vary from the CoNAD USGS distribution?
In model calibration can we account for strong forcing conditions (upwelling, groundwater input, flow events, rainfall) in narrowing the focus and controlling for the restoration effects.