Spatial Variability in Marsh Vulnerability and Coastal Forest Loss in Chesapeake Bay

Sea level rise (SLR) and saltwater intrusion are driving shifts in coastal ecosystems that must migrate to survive. Marsh migration into adjacent uplands is a primary mechanism for sustaining coastal marshes, but potentially limited by natural and anthropogenic barriers. In this study, we focus on the Chesapeake Bay as a case study and combine previous delineations of the marsh-forest boundary and high-resolution topobathymetric data with sea level rise predictions to uniquely assess marsh migration potential on the scale of U.S. Geological Survey HUC10 watersheds. Combining these predictions results in a high-resolution Chesapeake Bay-wide assessment of marsh migration potential through the end of the century. Additionally, we analyze high-resolution land use data within the potential migration area to assess what ecosystems are at risk of loss to marsh via salinization and what potential anthropogenic features exist in the marsh migration corridor. The data consists of 3 files created from analyses conducted during the study: 1) A table summarizing characteristics of the study sites, including elevation and land use, and 2) A zipped Shapefile containing the boundaries of the HUC10 watersheds, 3) A zipped raster (CB_MarshMigrationArea.tif) of elevation categories. Cell values indicate: 1 = area below threshold elevation 2 = area between threshold elevation and 0.5 m of SLR. 3 = area between 0.5 and 1 m of SLR. 4 = area between 1 and 1.5 m of SLR. 5 = area between 1.5 and 2 m of SLR. 6 = area between 2 and 2.5 m of SLR. 7 = area above 2.5 m of SLR. Additionally, uploaded are 10 additional files containing the exact copies of the publicly available data we analyzed to create the above files. To obtain these files from their original sources (i.e. USGS, NOAA, etc) please see the links provided in the Metadata-LO-Letters-dat-V3.rtf file. 1) Points at the marsh-forest boundary 2) Chesapeake Conservancy High-Resolution Land Use 3) Chesapeake Conservancy High-Resolution Land Cover 4) NOAA technical report data 5) 10 Digit Watershed Boundary Dataset: Virginia 6) 10 Digit Watershed Boundary Dataset: Maryland 7) National Wetlands Inventory: Virginia 8) National Wetlands Inventory: Maryland 9) Chesapeake Bay surface salinity 10) USGS CoNED spatial metadata Due to its very large size, not included are USGS CoNED DEM data downloaded from USGS (https://chs.coast.noaa.gov/htdata/raster2/elevation/Chesapeake_Coned_update_DEM_2016_8656/) on 2021-09-16. The area UTM NAD1983 Zone 18N coordinates were: north: 4463434, west: 228360, east: 501230, south: 4045339. All analyses were conducted in ArcDesktop 10.7. All files were projected to UTM Zone 18N and are in reference to NAVD88. Words in all capital letters under variable descriptions indicate a tool used in ArcGIS to complete the processing step.