Oregon Sea Grant

Estuaries represent the confluence of land and ocean environments and encompass a number of complex interactions amongst tides, winds, offshore waves and the riverine contributions, all of which contribute to total water levels (TWLs).The study of TWLs and the relative weight of its components can assist local communities in mitigating inundation events as well as drive a deeper understanding of potential impacts on ecological processes. Accurate predictions of surge and TWLs benefit from both deterministic and probabilistic methods. This thesis presents two manuscripts which examine wave and surge behavior within a representative Pacific Northwest estuary, Tillamook Bay, for a pair of fundamentally distinct research objectives: a singular, extreme storm event and a long-term climatological impacts study.