Accelerated sea level rise and the potential for an increase in frequency of the most intense hurricanes due to climate change threaten the vitality and habitability of barrier islands by lowering their relative elevation and altering frequency of overwash. High-density development may further increase island vulnerability by restricting delivery of overwash to the subaerial island. We analyzed pre-Hurricane Sandy and post-Hurricane Sandy (2012) lidar surveys of the New Jersey coast to assess human influence on barrier overwash, comparing natural environments to two developed environments (commercial and residential) using shore-perpendicular topographic profiles. The volumes of overwash delivered to residential and commercial environments are reduced by 40% and 90%, respectively, of that delivered to natural environments. We use this analysis and an exploratory barrier island evolution model to assess long-term impacts of anthropogenic structures. Simulations suggest that natural barrier islands may persist under a range of likely future sea level rise scenarios (7-13 mm/yr), whereas developed barrier islands will have a long-term tendency toward drowning.

Clastic, depositional strandplain systems have the potential to record changes in the primary drivers of coastal evolution: climate, sea‐level, and the frequency of major meteorological and oceanographic events. This study seeks to use one such record from a southern Brazilian strandplain to highlight the potentially‐complex nature of coastal sedimentological response to small changes in these drivers. Following a 2 to 4 m highstand at ca 5·8 ka in southern Brazil, falling sea‐level reworked shelf sediment onshore, forcing coastal progradation, smoothing the irregular coastline and forming the 5 km wide Pinheira Strandplain, composed of ca 500 successive beach and dune ridges. Sediment cores, grab samples and >11 km of ground‐penetrating radar profiles reveal that the strandplain sequence is composed of well‐sorted, fine to very‐fine quartz sand. Since the mid‐Holocene highstand, the shoreline prograded at a rate of ca 1 to 2 m yr−1 through the deposition of a 4 to 6 m thick shoreface unit; a 1 to 3 m thick foreshore unit containing ubiquitous ridge and runnel facies; and an uppermost beach and foredune unit. However, the discovery of a linear, 100 m wide barrier ridge with associated washover units, a 3 to 4 m deep lagoon and 250 m wide tidal inlet within the strandplain sequence reveals a period of shoreline transgression at 3·3 to 2·8 ka during the otherwise regressive developmental history of the plain. The protected nature of Pinheira largely buffered it from changes in precipitation patterns, wave energy and fluvial sediment supply during the time of its formation. However, multiple lines of evidence indicate that a change in the rate of relative sea‐level fall, probably due to either steric or ice‐volume effects, may have affected this coastline. Thus, whereas these other potential drivers cannot be fully discounted, this study provides insights into the complexity of decadal‐scale to millennial‐scale coastal response to likely variability in sea‐level change rates.

Virus-like particles (VLP), collected from the permanently anoxic Cariaco Basin between 10 October 1996 and 2 November 1999, were enumerated in water column and sediment trap samples. Vertical distributions of VLP from 18 depths between 7 and 1310 m generally corresponded to those of bacterial abundance and bacterial net production (BNP), with primary maxima consistently found in surface waters and midwater maxima near the O 2 /H 2 S interface. Temporal variations in VLP concentrations (0.81 to 630 × 10 8 VLP l -1 ) were highly correlated with chlorophyll a (chl a), bacterial abundance and BNP in the upper 250 m. In the redox transition zone (RTZ = 250 to 450 m), VLP abundance covaried with bacterial growth rates, but not bacterial abundance nor chemoautotrophic production. In the anoxic layer (> 450 m), temporal variations in VLP abundance were not significantly correlated with any measured variable. In the RTZ, the median VLP:bacteria ratio (VBR = 3) was significantly lower than in the oxic (VBR = 16) and anoxic (VBR = 31) layers for all observations, suggesting varying relationships between viruses, hosts and environment among these layers. Vertical fluxes of VLP associated with sedimenting debris varied between 0.39 and 520 × 10 ). VBRs in the sinking inventories were very low, varying from 0.01 to 1.2 and averaging 0.60, suggesting that VLP are not as numerically important in sinking particles as they are in suspended communities. Comparisons of sinking fluxes with suspended VLP inventories indicate that vertical transport is relatively unimportant in redistributing viruses in the water column. Estimated removal rates by sinking from the oxic, transition and anoxic layers averaged 0.11% mo -1 (n = 16) for apparent VLP.KEY WORDS: Viruses · Bacteria · Anoxia · Bacterial production · Microbial loop · Cariaco Basin Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherAquat Microb Ecol 30: [103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116] 2003 levels, thereby increasing supply of respiratory carbon to the lowest trophic levels (bacteria and protozoa) and diminishing overall system efficiency by introducing additional trophic iterations for biologically essential elements (Murray & Eldridge 1994). Using electron microscopic and epifluorescent microscopic techniques, free virioplankton and viralinfected microplankton have been shown to be plentiful in a variety of lacustrine, estuarine, coastal, oceanic and hypersaline environments from the tropics to the poles (e.g. Proctor & Fuhrman 1990, Bird et al. 1993, Cochlan et al. 1993, Oren et al. 1997, Weinbauer & Höfle 1998a, Steward et al. 2000. With few exceptions, surveys have been confined to oxic surface waters with 1 oceanic profile extending down to 5000 m (Hara et al. 1996). In oceanic profiles, virioplankton concentrations correlate with distributions of the most abundant hosts (bacteria and phytoplankton) and their productivity, generally decreasing dramatically through the photic zone, and attaining ...

*-note that Table DR1 only contains data sources used to map marsh and open water areas. We direct the reader to Himmelstoss et al. (2010) for a list of the sources used in that study to compile the shoreline dataset (of which we used the "Delmarva south" portion in this study).

Highlights • A new, detailed evolutionary model for the longest barrier in the Gulf of Maine and n updated chronologic framework for Holocene sea-level change and barrier development in northern Massachusetts are presented. • Spit elongation accounts for more than 60% of the barrier length • Shoreline progradation accounts for more than 90% of the barrier width • A paleo-inlet was active in central Plum Island around 3.5-3.6 ka. • Inlet closure occurred due to backbarrier infilling and tidal prism reduction.