This dataset consists of raster geotiff outputs from modeling vertical accretion and carbon accumulation in the Nisqually River Delta, Washington, USA. These rasters represent projections of future habitat type, change in surface elevation above Mean Sea Level, and total sediment carbon accumulation since 2011 in coastal wetland habitats. Projections were generated in 20-year increments for 100 years for five amounts of sea-level rise, three amounts of suspended sediment concentrations, and two alternative configurations of the U.S. Interstate-5 causeway as it crosses the Nisqually River to either prevent or allow inland habitat migration (a total of 30 scenarios). The full methods and results are described in detail in the parent manuscript, “Can coastal habitats rise to the challenge? Resilience of estuarine habitats, carbon accumulation, and its value to sea-level rise for adaptation planning in a Puget Sound estuary” (2022).

This dataset consists of raster geotiff outputs from modeling vertical accretion and carbon accumulation in the Nisqually River Delta, Washington, USA. These rasters represent projections of future habitat type, change in surface elevation above Mean Sea Level, and total sediment carbon accumulation since 2011 in coastal wetland habitats. Projections were generated in 20-year increments for 100 years for five amounts of sea-level rise, three amounts of suspended sediment concentrations, and two alternative configurations of the U.S. Interstate-5 causeway as it crosses the Nisqually River to either prevent or allow inland habitat migration (a total of 30 scenarios). The full methods and results are described in detail in the parent manuscript, “Can coastal habitats rise to the challenge? Resilience of estuarine habitats, carbon accumulation, and its value to sea-level rise for adaptation planning in a Puget Sound estuary” (2022).

This dataset consists of raster geotiff outputs from modeling vertical accretion and carbon accumulation in the Nisqually River Delta, Washington, USA. These rasters represent projections of future habitat type, change in surface elevation above Mean Sea Level, and total sediment carbon accumulation since 2011 in coastal wetland habitats. Projections were generated in 20-year increments for 100 years for five amounts of sea-level rise, three amounts of suspended sediment concentrations, and two alternative configurations of the U.S. Interstate-5 causeway as it crosses the Nisqually River to either prevent or allow inland habitat migration (a total of 30 scenarios). The full methods and results are described in detail in the parent manuscript, “Can coastal habitats rise to the challenge? Resilience of estuarine habitats, carbon accumulation, and its value to sea-level rise for adaptation planning in a Puget Sound estuary” (2022).

This dataset consists of raster geotiff outputs from modeling vertical accretion and carbon accumulation in the Nisqually River Delta, Washington, USA. These rasters represent projections of future habitat type, change in surface elevation above Mean Sea Level, and total sediment carbon accumulation since 2011 in coastal wetland habitats. Projections were generated in 20-year increments for 100 years for five amounts of sea-level rise, three amounts of suspended sediment concentrations, and two alternative configurations of the U.S. Interstate-5 causeway as it crosses the Nisqually River to either prevent or allow inland habitat migration (a total of 30 scenarios). The full methods and results are described in detail in the parent manuscript, “Can coastal habitats rise to the challenge? Resilience of estuarine habitats, carbon accumulation, and its value to sea-level rise for adaptation planning in a Puget Sound estuary” (2022).

Habitat projections from the WARMER-2 model for four tidal wetland sites in San Francisco Bay estuary under the constant sediment scenario, plus 0.2 ppt per decade salinity scenario, and the community transition organic productivity function under a 99 cm by 2100 sea-level rise scenario. Results are the average from one hundred Monte Carlo simulations.

Coastal wetland ecosystems are expected to migrate landward in response to accelerated sea-level rise. However, due to differences in topography and coastal urbanization extent, estuaries vary in their ability to accommodate wetland migration. The landward movement of wetlands requires suitable conditions, such as a gradual slope and land free of urban development. Urban barriers can constrain migration and result in wetland loss (coastal squeeze). For future-focused conservation planning purposes, there is a pressing need to quantify and compare the potential for wetland landward movement and coastal squeeze. For 41 estuaries in the northern Gulf of Mexico (i.e., the USA gulf coast), we quantified and compared the area available for the landward migration of tidal saline wetlands and the area where urban development is expected to prevent migration (coastal squeeze), under three alternative future sea-level rise scenarios (0.5-, 1.0-, and 1.5-m by 2100).

We assessed the resilience of wetlands to sea-level rise along a transitional gradient from tidal freshwater forested wetland (TFFW) to oligohaline marsh by measuring processes controlling wetland elevation. We identified fundamental differences in how resilience is maintained across wetland community types, which have important implications for management activities that aim to restore or conserve resilient systems.

As sea levels rise, wetlands can adapt to changing conditions through vertical development (that is, soil surface elevation gains via biophysical feedbacks) and horizontal migration into upslope areas. Elevation-based models of wetland transformation from sea-level rise are often hampered from a variety of sources of uncertainty, including contemporary elevation and water levels and future water levels from sea-level rise. This data release includes geospatial data products that utilize Monte Carlo simulations to address these sources of uncertainty and highlight potential wetland transformations under various relative sea-level rise scenarios along Texas' middle and upper coast. This data release includes the current extent of coastal wetlands and decadal maps of coastal wetland transformation from 2030–2100 for three relative sea-level rise scenarios — Intermediate-low, Intermediate, and Intermediate-high — from an interagency sea-level rise report published in 2022 (Sweet and others, 2022). Datasets in this release include the following classes: 1) Upslope (that is, areas that are above the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) moderate high tide flooding threshold; Sweet and others, 2022); 2) Irregularly oceanic-flooded wetlands (that is, wetlands that are flooded by oceanic water less frequently than daily [that is, below the NOAA moderate high tide flooding threshold and above the mean high water datum]); 3) Regularly oceanic-flooded wetlands (that is, wetlands that are flooded by oceanic water daily [that is, below the mean high water datum and above the mean lower low water datum] and generally fell in the upper two-thirds of this wetland zone based on elevation); 4) Converting to open water (that is, wetlands that are flooded by oceanic water daily [that is, below the mean high water datum and above the mean lower low water datum] and generally fell in the lower third of this wetland zone based on elevation; 5) Converted to open water (that is, areas where the decade of initiation for coastal wetland drowning has passed and have been in the “converting to open water” class for at least 50 years); 6) Low-lying, developed (that is, areas that fall in elevation ranges for wetland classes [that is, regularly oceanic-flooded wetlands, regularly oceanic-flooded wetlands, and converting to open water], but are located within developed areas); 7) Low-lying, leveed (that is, areas that fall in elevation ranges for wetland classes [that is, regularly oceanic-flooded wetlands, regularly oceanic-flooded wetlands, and converting to open water], but are located within levees); and 8) Low-lying, developed and leveed (that is, areas that fall in elevation ranges for wetland classes [that is, regularly oceanic-flooded wetlands, regularly oceanic-flooded wetlands, and converting to open water], but are located within levees or developed areas). Incorporating soil elevation change processes into wetland transformation models can be complex because soil elevation change processes can vary over space and time. In the past decade, there has been growing consensus regarding critical sea-level rise rate thresholds for the onset of wetland drowning (Morris and others, 2016, Horton and others, 2018, Saintilan and others, 2020, Törnqvist and others, 2020, Buffington and others, 2021, Saintilan and others, 2022, Saintilan and others, 2023). Here, our products utilize information from an analysis of when and where sea-level rise rates could cross thresholds for initiating coastal wetland drowning across the conterminous United States. The thresholds included are 4 mm/year, 7 mm/year, and 10 mm/year (see discussion in Osland and others, 2024). For this approach, we determined the relative sea-level rise rate by decade for watersheds within the study area. The decade that these rates exceeded one of these thresholds (that is, 4 mm/year, 7 mm/year, and 10 mm/year) marked the initiation of coastal wetland drowning. In other

The research was conducted at eight tidal marshes in coastal estuaries spanning the Washington and Oregon coastlines from Padilla Bay in northern Washington to Bandon located at the mouth of the Coquille River in southern Oregon. The researchers performed bathymetric surveys, created digital elevation models, measured historic rates of mineral and organic matter accumulation, conducted vegetation surveys, deployed water level data loggers, and produced WARMER wetland accretion model projections for each study site. This collection contains data for all of the above across a number of different datasets. Users should investigate the metadata for each item for more information about it's purpose, methods, quality, and characteristics.

We quantified the potential area available for landward migration of tidal saline wetlands and freshwater wetlands due to sea-level rise (SLR) at the estuary scale for 166 estuarine drainage areas and at the state scale for 22 coastal states and District of Columbia. We used 2016 Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) data in combination with the future wetland migration data under the 1.5 m global SLR scenario to evaluate the potential for wetland migration into all the individual C-CAP classes and into the following six land cover categories: (1) freshwater forest (wetland); (2) freshwater marsh (wetland); (3) terrestrial forest (upland); (4) terrestrial grassland (upland); (5) agricultural croplands (upland); and (6) pasture (upland). We also consolidated these categories to quantify potential migration into upland and wetland classes. Finally, we used the current C-CAP cover classes to quantify the current tidal saline wetland area and the current freshwater wetland area that is vulnerable to future tidal saline wetland migration.