Science Source
Atmospheric rivers and the mass mortality of wild oysters: insight into an extreme future?
- States that climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and severity of extreme events
- Investigates the biological impacts of one key feature for delivering precipitation extremes, atmospheric rivers (AR)
- Uses biological data coupled with remotely sensed and in situ environmental data to describe the role of ARs in the near 100% mass mortality of wild oysters in northern San Francisco Bay
- States that in March 2011, a series of ARs made landfall within California, contributing an estimated 69.3% of the precipitation within the watershed and driving an extreme freshwater discharge into San Francisco Bay
- States this discharge caused sustained low salinities (less than 6.3) that almost perfectly matched the known oyster critical salinity tolerance and was coincident with a mass mortality of one of the most abundant populations throughout this species' range
- Highlights a novel mechanism by which precipitation extremes may affect natural systems and the persistence of sensitive species in the face of environmental change
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