Jonathan Warrick
My research focuses on the intersection of rivers and the sea. Topics include the movement of sediment within and from coastal watersheds, and how sediment can alter coastal landscapes and habitats. Recently these subjects have been addressed in my work on the Elwha River, Washington, where the largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed in 2014.
Biography
Education
Ph.D., 2002, University of California, Santa Barbara
M.Sc., 1995, University Wisconsin-Madison
B.Sc., 1993, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Experience
Research Geologist, GS-15, 2016-present, USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Santa Cruz, California
Research Geologist, GS-14, 2008-2016, USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Santa Cruz, California
Research Geologist, GS-13, 2004-2008, USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, Santa Cruz, California
Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow, GS-12, 2002-2004, USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program, Menlo Park, California
Follow me on Google Scholar and ResearchGate
In The News...
2017 Los Angeles Times article, "Highway 1 was buried under a massive landslide. Months later, engineers battle Mother Nature to fix it." about the USGS remote sensing work to characterize the Mud Creek landslide in Big Sur, California.
2016 The Department of Interior and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, International RiverPrize Finalist, for the Elwha River Restoration Project
2015 New York Times article, “When Dams Come Down, Salmon and Sand Can Prosper” about the coastal changes from new supplies sediment.
2014 National Geographic news article, “World’s Largest Dam Removal Unleashes U.S. River After Century of Electric Production” about final stages of dam removal on the Elwha River.
2013 Elwha: A River Reborn by AAAS Kavli Science Journalism award winners Lynda Mapes and Steve Ringman.
2012 Front-page Seattle Times article, “Dam gone, nature rebuilds Elwha River beach” about sediment transport from the Elwha River during dam removal. August 6, 2012.
2009 Science Daily article, “Sediment Yield From The Tectonically Active Semiarid Western Transverse Ranges Of California” about sources of sediment and sand for southern California beaches.
2006 Environmental Science & Technology news article, “California’s Shifting Sands” (vol. 40, no.1, pp. 6-7) about river sources of beach sand.
Selected Publications
Sediment Sources and Budgets
Warrick, JA, Bountry, JA, East, A, Magirl, CS, Randle, TJ, Gelfenbaum, GR, Ritchie, AC, Pess, GR, Leung, V, Duda, J, 2015, Large-scale dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington, USA: source-to-sink sediment budget and synthesis. Geomorphology, v. 246, pp. 729–750, doi: 10.1016/j.geomorph.2015.01.010
Warrick, JA, JM Melack, and BM Goodridge, 2015, Sediment yields from small, steep coastal watersheds of California. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, v. 4, Part B, p. 516-534, doi: 10.1016/j.ejrh.2015.08.004
Warrick, JA, 2015, Trend analyses with river sediment rating curves. Hydrological Processes, v. 29 no. 6 pp. 936-949, doi: 10.1002/hyp.10198,.
Warrick, JA, 2014, Eel River margin source-to-sink sediment budget: revisited. Marine Geology, v. 351, p. 25-37, doi: 10.1016/j.margeo.2014.03.008
Warrick, JA, MA Madej, MA Goñi, and RA Wheatcroft, 2013, Trends in the suspended-sediment yields of coastal rivers of northern California, 1955-2010. Journal of Hydrology, vol. 489, p. 108-123.
Warrick JA, JA Hatten, GB Pasternack, AB Gray, MA Goni, and RA Wheatcroft, 2012, The effects of wildfire on the sediment yield of a coastal California watershed, Geological Society of America, Bulletin, vol. 124, no. 7/8, pp. 1130-1146.
Sediment Dispersal in the Ocean
Warrick, JA, AR Simms, A Ritchie, E Steel, P Dartnell, J Conrad, and D Finlayson, 2013, Hyperpycnal-derived fans of the Santa Barbara Channel, California. Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 40, no. 50488, p. 1-6.
Warrick JA, 2013, Dispersal of fine sediment in nearshore coastal waters. Journal of Coastal Research, vol. 29, no. 3, p. 579-596
Warrick JA and PL Barnard, 2012, The offshore export of sand during exceptional discharge from California rivers. Geology, vol. 40, no. 9, pp. 787-790.
Warrick JA, J Xu, M Noble, and HJ Lee. 2008. Rapid formation of hyperpycnal sediment gravity currents offshore of a semi-arid California river. Continental Shelf Research. vol. 28, pp. 991-1009.
Warrick JA, Milliman JD. 2003. Hyperpycnal sediment discharge from semi-arid southern California rivers - implications for coastal sediment budgets. Geology, vol. 31, no. 9, pp. 781-784.
Coastal River Plumes
Warrick JA and KL Farnsworth, 2017, Coastal river plumes: Collisions and coalescence, Progress in Oceaography, vol. 151, pp. 245-260.
Warrick JA and AW Stevens, 2011, A buoyant plume adjacent to a headland - Observations of the Elwha River plume, Continental Shelf Research, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 85-97.
Warrick JA, PM DiGiacomo, SB Weisberg, NP Nezlin, M Mengel, BH Jones, JC Ohlmann, L Washburn, EJ Terrill and KL Farnsworth. 2007. River plume patterns and dynamics within the Southern California Bight. Continental Shelf Research, vol. 27, pp. 2427-2448.
Warrick JA, Fong DA. 2004. Dispersal scaling from the world’s rivers. Geophysical Research Letters. vol. 34, pp. L04301. doi: 10.1029/2003GL019114. [2004 AGU Journal Highlight]
Elwha River Dam Removal
Warrick, JA, JA Bountry, AE East, CS Magirl, TJ Randle, G Gelfenbaum, AC Ritchie, GR Pess, V Leung, JJ Duda, 2015, Large-scale dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington, USA: Source-to-sink sediment budget and synthesis. Geomorphology, v. 246, doi: 10.1016/j.geomorph.2015.01.010
Warrick JA, JJ Duda, CS Magirl, and CA Curran, 2012, River turbidity and sediment loads during dam removal. Eos, vol. 93, no. 43, pp. 425-426.
Duda JJ, JA Warrick and CS Magirl (eds.), 2011, Coastal habitats of the Elwha River—Biological and physical patterns and processes prior to dam removal, U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5120, 263 pp.
Measurement Techniques
Warrick JA, AC Ritchie, G Adelman, K Adelmann, PW Limber, 2017, New techniques to measure cliff change from historical oblique photographs and structure-from-motion photogrammetry. Journal of Coastal Research, vol. 33, no. 1, pp.39-55.
Miller IM and JA Warrick, 2012, Measuring sediment transport and bed disturbance with tracers on a mixed beach. Marine Geology, vol. 299-302, pp.1-17.
Warrick JA, DM Rubin, P Ruggiero, J Harney, AE Draut, and D Buscombe. 2009. Cobble Cam: Grain-size measurements of sand to boulder from digital photographs and autocorrelation analyses. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, vol. 34, no. 13, pp. 1811-1821. ***
Warrick JA, Mertes LAK, Siegel DA, MacKenzie C. 2004. Estimating suspended sediment concentrations in turbid coastal waters of the Santa Barbara Channel with SeaWiFS. International Journal of Remote Sensing-Remote Sensing Letters, vol. 25, no. 10, pp. 1995-2002.
NOTE:
*** Computer coding for the Cobble Cam (and other digital grain size) techniques are available at:
https://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/seds/grainsize/code.html
Science and Products
USGS science supporting the Elwha River Restoration Project
The Elwha River Restoration Project...
... has reconnected the water, salmon, and sediment of a pristine river and coast of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Coordinated by the National Park Service, restoration of the Elwha River included the removal of two large dams that had blocked salmon and sediment passage for almost 100 years. The largest dam removal in U.S. history began in...
Remote Sensing Coastal Change
We use remote-sensing technologies—such as aerial photography, satellite imagery, and lidar (laser-based surveying)—to measure coastal change along U.S. shorelines.
Coastal Climate Impacts
The impacts of climate change and sea-level rise around the Pacific and Arctic Oceans can vary tremendously. Thus far the vast majority of national and international impact assessments and models of coastal climate change have focused on low-relief coastlines that are not near seismically active zones. Furthermore, the degree to which extreme waves and wind will add further stress to coastal...
Climate check in our Santa Cruz backyard
For a beach town like Santa Cruz, preserving beaches by mitigating coastal erosion is vital. Surveys conducted now and regularly in the future will help scientists understand the short- and long-term impacts of climate change, El Niño years, and sea-level rise on a populated and vulnerable coastline.
Exploring the USGS Science Data Life Cycle in the Cloud
Executive Summary Traditionally in the USGS, data is processed and analyzed on local researcher computers, then moved to centralized, remote computers for preservation and publishing (ScienceBase, Pubs Warehouse). This approach requires each researcher to have the necessary hardware and software for processing and analysis, and also to bring all external data required for the workflow over the...
Mapping coastal cliff morphology and change with unmanned aircraft systems
Coastal cliff erosion can be hazardous to people and infrastructure, yet these erosion processes are not well understood because they are episodic and difficult to observe.
National Dam Removal Database: A living database for information on dying dams
The United States has over 2 million dams on rivers and streams (Graf, 1999), and more than 84,000 of the larger dams are documented in the congressionally mandated National Inventory of Dams (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2015). The average age of these National Inventory of Dams is 52 years; by the year 2030, over 80 percent will be at least 50 years old (American Society of Civil Engineers...
Dam removal: synthesis of ecological and physical responses
Dam decommissioning is rapidly emerging as an important river restoration strategy in the U.S., with several major removals recently completed or in progress. But few studies have evaluated the far-reaching consequences of these significant environmental perturbations, especially those resulting from removals of large (>10-15 m tall) structures during the last decade. In particular,...
Projected 21st century coastal flooding in the Southern California Bight. Part 1: Development of the third generation CoSMoS model
Due to the effects of climate change over the course of the next century, the combination of rising sea levels, severe storms, and coastal change will threaten the sustainability of coastal communities, development, and ecosystems as we know them today. To clearly identify coastal vulnerabilities and develop appropriate adaptation strategies due...
O'Neill, Andrea; Erikson, Li; Barnard, Patrick L.; Limber, Patrick W.; Vitousek, Sean; Warrick, Jonathan; Foxgrover, Amy C.; Lovering, Jessica
Science partnership between U.S. Geological Survey and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe—Understanding the Elwha River Dam Removal Project
After nearly a century of producing power, two large hydroelectric dams on the Elwha River in Washington State were removed during 2011 to 2014 to restore the river ecosystem and recover imperiled salmon populations. Roughly two-thirds of the 21 million cubic meters of sediment—enough to fill nearly 2 million dump trucks—contained behind the dams...
Duda, Jeffrey J.; Beirne, Matt M.; Warrick, Jonathan A.; Magirl, Christopher S. Coherence between coastal and river flooding along the California coast
Water levels around river mouths are intrinsically determined by sea level and river discharge. If storm-associated coastal water-level anomalies coincide with extreme river discharge, landscapes near river mouths will be flooded by the hydrodynamic interactions of these two water masses. Unfortunately, the temporal relationships between ocean and...
Odigie, Kingsley O.; Warrick, Jonathan Increased sediment load during a large-scale dam removal changes nearshore subtidal communities
The coastal marine ecosystem near the Elwha River was altered by a massive sediment influx—over 10 million tonnes—during the staged three-year removal of two hydropower dams. We used time series of bathymetry, substrate grain size, remotely sensed turbidity, scuba dive surveys, and towed video observations collected before and during dam removal...
Rubin, Stephen P.; Miller, Ian M.; Foley, Melissa M.; Berry, Helen D.; Duda, Jeffrey J.; Hudson, Benjamin; Elder, Nancy E.; Beirne, Matthew M.; Warrick, Jonathan; McHenry, Michael L.; Stevens, Andrew W.; Eidam, Emily; Ogston, Andrea; Gelfenbaum, Guy R.; Pedersen, Rob Ephemeral seafloor sedimentation during dam removal: Elwha River, Washington
The removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams from the Elwha River in Washington, USA, resulted in the erosion and transport of over 10 million m3 of sediment from the former reservoirs and into the river during the first two years of the dam removal process. Approximately 90% of this sediment was transported through the Elwha River and to...
Foley, Melissa M.; Warrick, Jonathan Coastal habitat and biological community response to dam removal on the Elwha River
Habitat diversity and heterogeneity play a fundamental role in structuring ecological communities. Dam emplacement and removal can fundamentally alter habitat characteristics, which in turn can affect associated biological communities. Beginning in the early 1900s, the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams in Washington, USA, withheld an estimated 30...
Foley, Melissa M.; Warrick, Jonathan A.; Ritchie, Andrew C.; Stevens, Andrew W.; Shafroth, Patrick B.; Duda, Jeffrey J.; Beirne, Matthew M.; Paradis, Rebecca; Gelfenbaum, Guy R.; McCoy, Randall; Cubley, Erin S. Coastal river plumes: Collisions and coalescence
Plumes of buoyant river water spread in the ocean from river mouths, and these plumes influence water quality, sediment dispersal, primary productivity, and circulation along the world’s coasts. Most investigations of river plumes have focused on large rivers in a coastal region, for which the physical spreading of the plume is assumed to be...
Warrick, Jonathan; Farnsworth, Katherine L New techniques to measure cliff change from historical oblique aerial photographs and structure-from-motion photogrammetry
Oblique aerial photograph surveys are commonly used to document coastal landscapes. Here it is shown that adequate overlap may exist in these photographic records to develop topographic models with Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetric techniques. Using photographs of Fort Funston, California, from the California Coastal Records Project,...
Warrick, Jonathan; Ritchie, Andy; Adelman, Gabrielle; Adelman, Ken; Limber, Patrick W. Bathymetry, topography, and sediment grain-size data from the Elwha River delta, Washington, February 2016
Two dams on the Elwha River, Washington State, USA trapped over 20 million m3 of sediment, reducing downstream sediment fluxes and contributing to erosion of the river's coastal delta. The removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams between 2011 and 2014 induced massive increases in river sediment supply and provided an unprecedented opportunity...
Stevens, Andrew; Gelfenbaum, Guy R.; Warrick, Jonathan; Miller, Ian M.; Weiner, Heather M. Bathymetry, topography, and sediment grain-size data from the Elwha River delta, Washington, January 2015
Two dams on the Elwha River, Washington State, USA trapped over 20 million m3 of sediment, reducing downstream sediment fluxes and contributing to erosion of the river's coastal delta. The removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams between 2011 and 2014 induced massive increases in river sediment supply and provided an unprecedented...
Stevens, Andrew; Gelfenbaum, Guy R.; Warrick, Jonathan; Miller, Ian M.; Weiner, Heather M. Bathymetry, topography, and sediment grain-size data from the Elwha River delta, Washington, July 2015
Two dams on the Elwha River, Washington State, USA trapped over 20 million m3 of sediment, reducing downstream sediment fluxes and contributing to erosion of the river's coastal delta. The removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams between 2011 and 2014 induced massive increases in river sediment supply and provided an unprecedented...
Stevens, Andrew; Gelfenbaum, Guy R.; Warrick, Jonathan; Miller, Ian M.; Weiner, Heather M. Bathymetry, topography, and sediment grain-size data from the Elwha River delta, Washington, July 2016
Two dams on the Elwha River, Washington State, USA trapped over 20 million m3 of sediment, reducing downstream sediment fluxes and contributing to erosion of the river's coastal delta. The removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams between 2011 and 2014 induced massive increases in river sediment supply and provided an unprecedented...
Stevens, Andrew; Gelfenbaum, Guy R.; Warrick, Jonathan; Miller, Ian M.; Weiner, Heather M.
Largest Dam Removal in U.S. History Scientifically Characterized
SEATTLE — The effects of dam removal are better known as a result of several new studies released this week by government, tribal and university researchers. The scientists worked together to characterize the effects of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history occurring on the Elwha River of Washington State.