CASCaDE: Computational Assessments of Scenarios of Change for the Delta Ecosystem
The CASCaDE 2 Project is in its final year. We will update this website as project deliverables become available.
November 24, 2015: We have provided our final report to our primary external funder, the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC). Although the project term with DSC funding is over, work continues on CASCaDE II. Links to the final report materials follow:
1) CASCaDE 2 Final Report to DSC
2) One-page summary for public
Executive Summary of CASCaDE 2 Proposal
(full proposal HERE)
This proposal builds upon an
existing model-based effort to develop
a holistic view of the Bay-Delta-River-Watershed system. CASCaDE 1
developed a set of linked models to assess Delta ecosystem response to
climate change. In CASCaDE 2, we propose to refine and extend
those modeling capabilities to assess Delta ecosystem response to
changes in climate and physical configuration. With a new
state-of-the-art hydrodynamic and sediment model at its core, CASCaDE
2 will link models of climate, hydrology, hydrodynamics, sediment,
geomorphology, phytoplankton, bivalves, contaminants, marsh accretion,
and fish.
Our goals are to apply these linked
models to 1) better understand
Delta ecosystem function, 2) assess possible futures of the Delta under
scenarios of climate and structural change, and 3) provide
science-based information to support the DSC in its co-equal goals of
water supply and ecosystem protection. The tools developed will provide
an objective basis for anticipating and diagnosing Delta ecosystem
responses to planned and unplanned changes. Experiments using the
linked models are designed to address questions such as: How will
climate change, together with new conveyance structures or increased
flooded island habitat, alter water flow and drinking water quality?
With projected changes in residence time, turbidity, temperature, and
salinity, how will primary productivity, invasive bivalves, marsh
processes, contaminant dynamics, and fish populations respond?
CASCaDE I description and
products (2006-2010)
(see also "Data by Task" to the left)
This is the CASCaDE Project web site. This project was funded by the CALFED Science Program.
The CASCaDE project comprises an approach for determining how multiple drivers of environmental change would interact to change ecosystems targeted for restoration by CALFED. CASCaDE is aimed not at predicting the future, but at building an understanding of how the ecosystem might respond to a few plausible scenarios of change.
Design of this study is built from hypotheses that: (1) California's hydrology will change during the 21st century in response to global warming; (2) ecosystem structure and function will respond to changes in California's water supply, population, land use, sea level, constructed habitats and storage-conveyance facilities, and potential levee failures; (3) sufficient information is available to project plausible scenarios of change in each of these forcings; (2) climatic, hydrologic, hydrodynamic, water-quality, geomorphic and ecosystem processes are linked in the Bay-Delta-River-Watershed system, and thus models to project future conditions there must also be linked; and (5) strategic planning by CBDA will benefit from mechanistic, ecosystem-scale projections of future forcings and responses, posed as plausible scenarios of system change.
Other Documents
