A Conterminous USA-Scale Map of Relative Tidal Marsh Elevation

ABSTRACT: Tidal wetlands provide myriad ecosystem services across local to global scales. With their uncertain vulnerability or resilience to rising sea levels, there is a need for mapping flooding drivers and vulnerability proxies for these ecosystems at a national scale. However, tidal wetlands in the conterminous USA are diverse with differing elevation gradients, and tidal amplitudes, making broad geographic comparisons difficult. To address this, a national-scale map of relative tidal elevation (Z*MHW), a physical metric that normalizes elevation to tidal amplitude at mean high water (MHW), was constructed for the first time at 30 × 30-m resolution spanning the conterminous USA. Contrary to two study hypotheses, watershed-level median Z*MHW and its variability generally increased from north to

SUBMITTER: Holmquist J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9309155 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature