A Combined Historical and Sedimentological Reconstruction of Extratropical Cyclone Derived Coastal Flooding in Boston, MA

Stromer, Zachary D

Publication:
A Combined Historical and Sedimentological Reconstruction of Extratropical Cyclone Derived Coastal Flooding in Boston, MA

dc.contributor.advisor	Jonathan D Woouff
dc.contributor.author	Stromer, Zachary D
dc.contributor.department	University of Massachusetts Amherst
dc.contributor.department	Geosciences
dc.date	2024-03-28T20:31:23.000
dc.date.accessioned	2024-04-26T18:22:07Z
dc.date.available	2024-04-26T18:22:07Z
dc.date.submitted	May
dc.date.submitted	2017
dc.description.abstract	Many flood risk assessments are based on instrumental records less than a century in length. Sedimentary and historical archives provide the opportunity to extend flood records by several centuries to millennia. In doing so these longer flood records provide opportunities for improving upon current flood risk assessment and gaining additional insight on the various climatic and geomorphic processes that drive changes in flood frequency. Such a reconstruction has not been attempted previously for Boston, MA where extratropical cyclones (ETC) are currently the dominant mechanism of coastal flooding. Here, we present both a historical reconstruction of extreme storm tides to affect Boston Harbor, and an independent geologic assessment of extreme flooding based on flood deposits preserved within the sediments of Bartlett Pond, a back-barrier coastal pond located 60 kilometers south of Boston. The historical reconstruction presented here identifies events of extreme flooding back to 1723, which are temporally consistent with overwash deposits identified from the sedimentary analysis at Bartlett Pond. Bartlett Pond is beyond the influence of significant dredging, landfill and dam projects within Boston Harbor. The consistency between extreme flood occurrences in Boston and Bartlett Pond therefore suggest that these man-made alterations have had a minimal impact on extreme flooding to the harbor. Additional modeling work is necessary however to provide confirmation on this initial finding. While flooding associated with the Blizzard of 1978 appears to be an anomaly in the modern instrumental record, our new historical/sedimentological record identify 6 additional events of similar size since European colonization, suggesting an under-assessment of the risk of these types of extreme events for Boston by as much as 300%. Additionally, the 1000 yr Bartlett Pond sedimentary reconstruction appears to show an increase in overwash frequency over the last 300 – 500 years when compared to the 500 years prior. A similar increase in ETC flooding has been observed in nearby sedimentological archives from the Gulf of Maine and could possibly be explained by variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and/or changes in sea surface temperature.
dc.description.degree	Master of Science (M.S.)
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.7275/9909338
dc.identifier.orcid	N/A
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/33564
dc.relation.url	https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1520&context=masters_theses_2&unstamped=1
dc.source.status	published
dc.subject	Extratropical Cyclone
dc.subject	Paleotempestology
dc.subject	Boston
dc.subject	Other Earth Sciences
dc.subject	Sedimentology
dc.title	A Combined Historical and Sedimentological Reconstruction of Extratropical Cyclone Derived Coastal Flooding in Boston, MA
dc.type	openaccess
dc.type	article
dc.type	thesis
digcom.contributor.author	isAuthorOfPublication\|email:zstromer@umass.edu\|institution:University of Massachusetts Amherst\|Stromer, Zachary D
digcom.identifier	masters_theses_2/539
digcom.identifier.contextkey	9909338
digcom.identifier.submissionpath	masters_theses_2/539
dspace.entity.type	Publication