Coastal sedimentation across North America doubled in the 20<sup>th</sup> century despite river dams.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32591539.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-16994-z and PMC identifier 7319974.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The proliferation of dams since 1950 promoted sediment deposition in reservoirs, which is thought to be starving the coast of sediment and decreasing the resilience of communities to storms and sea-level rise. Diminished river loads measured upstream from the coast, however, should not be assumed to propagate seaward. Here, we show that century-long records of sediment mass accumulation rates (g cm-2 yr-1) and sediment accumulation rates (cm yr-1) more than doubled after 1950 in coastal depocenters around North America. Sediment sources downstream of dams compensate for the river-sediment lost to impoundments. Sediment is accumulating in coastal depocenters at a rate that matches or exceeds relative sea-level rise, apart from rapidly subsiding Texas and Louisiana where water depths are increasing and intertidal areas are disappearing. Assuming no feedbacks, accelerating global sea-level rise will eventually surpass current sediment accumulation rates, underscoring the need for including coastal-sediment management in habitat-restoration projects.