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Sedimentology of Urban Ocean Areas: Jonathan Warrick
Project Title: Sedimentology of Urban Ocean Areas
Mendenhall Fellow: Jonathan Warrick, (650) 329-5376, jwarrick@usgs.gov
Duty Station: Menlo Park, CA
Start Date: October 1, 2002
Education: Ph.D. (Marine Sciences), University of California, Santa Barbara, 2002
Research Advisors: Homa Lee, (650) 329-5485, hjlee@usgs.gov; Marlene Noble, (650) 329-5486, mnoble@usgs.gov 		  Jonathan Warrick

Project Description: Mountainous regions provide important sediment and geochemical inputs to the coastal ocean. These inputs can be fundamentally altered by the influences of urbanization. For example, urbanization can alter runoff amounts and timing, cause substantial changes in the erosion of the landscape, and introduce pollutants to the coastal ocean.

The focus of this Mendenhall project is to evaluate the landscape sources and coastal sinks of materials eroded from the mountainous and urbanized landscape of southern California. Southern California is an ideal study location, since it naturally produces high rates of sediment discharge, is currently inhabited by almost 20 million people, and continues to urbanize at high rates. Research will focus on the construction of sediment and pollutant mass balances from urban, urbanizing and rural basins, along with the observation and description of important sediment transport processes both on land and in the sea.

Publications:
Warrick, J.A., and Milliman, J.D.,. 2003, Hyperpycnal sediment discharge from semiarid southern California rivers: Implications for coastal sediment budgets: Geology, v. 31, no. 9, p.781-784.
Warrick, J.A., and Fong, D.A., 2004, Dispersal scaling from the world’s rivers: Geophysical Research Letters, v. 31, L04301, doi:10.1029/2003GL019114.
Warrick, J.A., Washburn, L., Brzezinski, M.A., and Siegel, D.A., in press. Nutrient contributions to the Santa Barbara Channel, California, from the ephemeral Santa Clara River. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Research.
Warrick, J.A., Orzech, K.M., and Rubin, D.M,. in review. The effects of urbanization and flood control on suspended sediment discharge of a southern California river: Water Resources Research.

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