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Noah Knowles

Noah Knowles is a Research Hydrologist with the USGS Water Resources Mission Area. 

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CASCaDE2 flowchart showing the system of linked models being used to evaluate scenarios of climate and infrastructure change.

CASCaDE: Computational Assessments of Scenarios of Change for the Delta Ecosystem

The Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers provides drinking water supplies to two-thirds of Californians, and is a fragile ecosystem home to threatened and endangered species. The CASCaDE project builds on several decades of USGS science to address the goals of achieving water supply reliability and restoring the ecosystems in the Bay-Delta system.
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Water Resources
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CASCaDE: Computational Assessments of Scenarios of Change for the Delta Ecosystem

The Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers provides drinking water supplies to two-thirds of Californians, and is a fragile ecosystem home to threatened and endangered species. The CASCaDE project builds on several decades of USGS science to address the goals of achieving water supply reliability and restoring the ecosystems in the Bay-Delta system.
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Data used in projected flow analysis in Yolo Bypass under 20 scenarios of climate change

Yolo Bypass is an ecological feature of the Bay-Delta ecosystem in California that provides floodplain habitat for spawning and rearing of Sacramento Splittail (Pogonichthys macrolepidotus) and rearing of juvenile Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) when inundated. We used outputs from 10 climate change models for two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) for greenhouse gas concentrat
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California Water Science Center
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The future of sediment transport and streamflow under a changing climate and the implications for long-term resilience of the San Francisco Bay-Delta

Sedimentation and turbidity have effects on habitat suitability in the San Francisco Bay‐Delta (Bay‐Delta), concerning key species in the bay as well as the ability of the delta marshes to keep pace with sea level rise. A daily rainfall runoff and transport model of the Sacramento River Basin of northern California was developed to simulate streamflow and suspended sediment transport to the Bay‐De
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Water Resources, California Water Science Center

Responses of unimpaired flows, storage, and managed flows to scenarios of climate change in the San Francisco Bay-Delta watershed

Projections of meteorology downscaled from global climate model runs were used to drive a model of unimpaired hydrology of the Sacramento/San Joaquin watershed, which in turn drove models of operational responses and managed flows. Twenty daily climate change scenarios for water years 1980–2099 were evaluated with the goal of producing inflow boundary conditions for a watershed sediment model and
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Water Resources

Modeling managed flows in the Sacramento/San Joaquin watershed, California, under scenarios of future change for CASCaDE2

Projections of managed flows from the Sacramento River/San Joaquin River watershed, California, into the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta under scenarios of future climate change are needed for evaluations of potential impacts on water supply and estuarine ecosystems. A new, multiple-model approach for achieving this is described. First, downscaled global climate model outputs ar
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Water Resources

Application of an unstructured 3D finite volume numerical model to flows and salinity dynamics in the San Francisco Bay-Delta

A linked modeling approach has been undertaken to understand the impacts of climate and infrastructure on aquatic ecology and water quality in the San Francisco Bay-Delta region. The Delft3D Flexible Mesh modeling suite is used in this effort for its 3D hydrodynamics, salinity, temperature and sediment dynamics, phytoplankton and water-quality coupling infrastructure, and linkage to a habitat suit
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Water Resources

Natural and management influences on freshwater inflows and salinity in the San Francisco Estuary at monthly to interannual scales

Understanding the processes controlling the physics, chemistry, and biology of the San Francisco Estuary and their relation to climate variability is complicated by the combined influence on freshwater inflows of natural variability and upstream management. To distinguish these influences, alterations of estuarine inflow due to major reservoirs and freshwater pumping in the watershed were inferred

Modeling and predicting intertidal variations of the salinity field in the Bay/Delta

San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta have challenged estuarine modelers for some years.  Accurate, broad-scale models of this estuary have been in demand by those concerned with its ecological health and the development of sound management policies.  A description and better understanding of the dynamics that govern the bay/delta are complicated by the system's complexity, requir
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Ecosystems, Toxic Substances Hydrology, Environmental Health Program

Estuaries: Life on the edge: Chapter 19

No abstract available.
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Water Resources

Potential effects of global warming on the Sacramento/San Joaquin watershed and the San Francisco estuary

California's primary hydrologic system, the San Francisco estuary and its upstream watershed, is vulnerable to the regional hydrologic consequences of projected global climate change. Projected temperature anomalies from a global climate model are used to drive a combined model of watershed hydrology and estuarine dynamics. By 2090, a projected temperature increase of 2.1°C results in a loss of ab
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Water Resources, Ecosystems, Toxic Substances Hydrology, Environmental Health Program, California Water Science Center

Modeling the hydroclimatology of the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary and watershed

No abstract available.

Trends in Snow Cover in the Continental United States (1950-2010)

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Water Resources

Diagnosing the flood of 1997 in San Francisco Bay with observations and model results

No abstract available. 
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Ecosystems, Toxic Substances Hydrology, Environmental Health Program

Implications for future survival of delta smelt from four climate change scenarios for the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California

Changes in the position of the low salinity zone, a habitat suitability index, turbidity, and water temperature modeled from four 100-year scenarios of climate change were evaluated for possible effects on delta smelt Hypomesus transpacificus, which is endemic to the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. The persistence of delta smelt in much of its current habitat into the next century appears uncertain.
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Water Resources, California Water Science Center

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