About the Project:
By examining spatial and temporal temperature and sedimentation patterns in Coos Bay estuary, this team built on a previous collaborative project to provide users with a dynamic picture of estuary habitat and potential impacts of climate change and land use changes, like removal of tide gates or dredging. The project team expanded an earlier version of a hydrodynamic model by adding relevant biological and ecological metrics, including a dynamic water temperature variable. Additional time periods were also added to the model, including three full years which demonstrate seasonal cycles and the arrival of a large marine heatwave to the estuary in 2014 and 2016. With these expansions, the project has reached more partners and provided video content for the visitor centers at SSNERR and the Charleston Marine Life Center.
About this Resource:
This physical model of a sediment core, developed for the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology’s Charleston Marine Life Center, demonstrates how researchers study sedimentation. The project used sediment cores like this one to learn about how sediments move through the estuary or are stored at certain locations. Sediment erosion or accretion can impact habitat for critical estuarine species like native oysters and eelgrass. This educational model was made by joining different layers of sediments together with epoxy. The hockey pucks illustrate the difference between sand and mud with grains visible in the sand-sized sediments, but individual silt particles being harder to distinguish. In the core, the sandy layers represent fake “tsunami” deposits that illustrate variations in grain size that we see after those types of events. The marsh grass on top helps viewers visualize the orientation of the core from the top of the marsh going down into the earth, essentially going back in time. The picture below shows the sediment ‘core’ and the sediment ‘pucks’ that show the different grain sizes.
Photo caption: A physical model of a sediment core, developed for the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology’s Charleston Marine Life Center, which demonstrates how researchers study sedimentation. The project used sediment cores like this one to learn about how sediments move through the estuary or are stored at certain locations.