The Long-Term Effects Of Rising Sea Level

Salt water marsh provide ecosystems to many type of wildlife. But in the past two centauries there has been many dangers to the marshes. Rising sea level has became a major problem for today’s environment, particularly the pacific coast marshes and wetlands, according to Dr. Glen Macdonald’s research. He has done research on how the sea level rising is affecting the marshes. His research has been focused on the 14 salt water marshes along the pacific coast, ranging from Tijuana to the northern Washington. Dr. Macdonald has taken sediment cores and analyzed them to help understand the long-term effects of sea level rise. In the earlier days of the United States, the wetlands and marshes were recognized as somewhat valuable for mainly waterfowl …show more content…
The Gulf Coast alone was responsible for 71 percent of the estimated loss, but a great amount of coast wetlands also reduced along the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. The sea level rise is threating the wetlands greatly. Dr. MacDonald has done various amounts of research, on how the sea level has rose, and how fast it is, along with making predictions of the long-term effects that could happen. He has been able to measure accretion of the swaps to understand what has been occurring over the last few decades to estimate what will occur in the future. He was measuring the amount of accretion based on the settlements of the chemicals used in the hydrogen bomb in 1963. He was able to find the elements under the surface to understand the accretion rates through the …show more content…
As the water rises, they move inland. In some areas this is a great thing, but in some of the areas the marshes have little to no area because of the housing and other business of the area. Under some of the worst-case scenarios, a most of the marshes would be almost completely gone or underwater by the end of the century. The few that would be okay would go from a high marsh to a low marsh or even to a mud flat. Now if sea level rise would be moderate, most of the marshes would go from high to mid marshes in the northern half of the west coast, while the southern half could go to a low marsh or completely submerged. Low sea level rise, or best case, the marshes would lose a little, but still be able to accrete enough where they would not be lost. The habitats would be greatly reduced by the marsh reduction, could lead to extinction of many species. Which around 2110 these habitats would be almost completely gone, due to the sea level rise destroying