
Cecilia EnriquezNational Autonomous University of Mexico | UNAM · Faculty of Science
Cecilia Enriquez
PhD
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80
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Publications (80)
The need to understand and forecast disasters driven by anthropogenic and natural forces in the Gulf of Mexico and to support management responses to hazardous events led policymakers, scientists, and industry representatives in Mexico to launch an ocean observation and modeling project (2015-2023) aimed at collecting multi-layered baseline informa...
The need to understand and forecast disasters driven by anthropogenic and natural forces in the Gulf of Mexico and to support management responses to hazardous events led policymakers, scientists, and industry representatives in Mexico to launch an ocean observation and modeling project (2015–2023) aimed at collecting multi-layered baseline informa...
Various ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) may be impacted by the present increase in offshore oil exploitation. To identify future changes caused by this activity, we assessed the structure of the megabenthos community in the Perdido Fold Belt (PFB) and its relationships with environmental variables, hydrocarbons, and heavy metals. To achieve...
In order to analyse the relationship between oceanographic factors and the distribution of marine phytoplankton in oligotrophic conditions, an oceanographic cruise was carried out in the waters surrounding Cozumel Island, Mexico. Due to the contrasting bathymetric characteristics around Cozumel, and the possible influence of such feature on the str...
Molluscs are a diverse phylum in coastal lagoons. Numerous gastropods and bivalves taxa that inhabit such lagoons display broad ranges of optima and tolerances with respect to temperature and salinity. We present the taxonomic composition and spatial distribution of mollusc assemblages (live-collected with soft parts intact or paired shells for Biv...
The dynamics and distribution of the carbonate system and the processes that regulate it over the Yucatan Shelf (YS), a region of karst geology and high productivity that is influenced by submarine groundwater discharges (SGDs) and upwelling, were explored with data from two oceanographic cruises. The first oceanographic cruise was conducted in Nov...
Although the technologies involved in converting saline gradient energy (SGE) are rapidly developing, few studies have focused on evaluating possible environmental impacts. In this work, the environmental impacts of a hypothetical 50 kW RED plant installed in La Carbonera Lagoon, Yucatan, Mexico, are addressed. The theoretical support was taken fro...
Water level measurements at four sub-basins of a highly dissipative coastal lagoon were used to study variability at tidal and subtidal scales and to determine whether atmospheric forcing influenced variations in water level at tidal scales. The amplitude of the main astronomic constituents, which were diurnal, attenuated quickly to <5% by the seco...
Wave-driven circulation and inlet dynamics were investigated in a Caribbean fringing reef lagoon via velocity transect data collected with a towed ADCP along two lagoon-inlet connections over diurnal tidal cycles. The inlets sampled were Boca Grande inlet, 700 m wide, and to the north of Boca Chica, 250 m wide. Flow reconstructions with semidiurnal...
The Rapid Oil Spill Hazard Assessment is presented as a demonstration of concept for a tool providing a framework for managers and planners to assess potential impact areas of oil spills. The tool consists of precomputed oil spill scenarios derived from the analysis of twenty years of modeled current data using Self-Organizing Maps to identify 16 r...
Shelf and deep-water soft-bottom macrofauna were explored in the western Gulf of Mexico in terms of species and functional trait assemblages. Their variation was analysed as functions of depth and time, and the relationship with sea-bottom environmental conditions was examined to disentangle their association with potential environmental drivers. F...
Natural and artificial systems containing water resources that have different salinities can be used to generate salinity-gradient energy (SGE). In this paper, the feasibility of implementing SGE in hypersaline coastal lagoons is addressed, taking the coastal lagoon La Carbonera in Yucatan, Mexico, as an exemplary case. A realistic approach to the...
The focus of this work was the functional diversity and redundancy of megabenthic fauna present in two areas, one karstic and another terrigenous located in the Mexican eare of the Gulf of Mexico
Introduction:
The Río Lagartos lagoon, located in the Ría Lagartos Biosphere Reserve, Yucatán, Gulf of Mexico, is a coastal hypersaline system ca. 80 km long (east-west). It comprises three basins: western (close to Río Lagartos fishermen village), middle (Las Coloradas) and eastern (close to El Cuyo fishermen village), that communicate through ver...
The ocean circulation in the western Gulf of Mexico is influenced by Loop Current eddies (LCEs), which affect the thermohaline structure and distribution of environmental variables as well as the design and management of offshore structures and maritime activities. In this study, we assess the ocean circulation and its variability by applying dual...
Background
We assessed metrics of the metazoan parasite infracommunities of the dusky flounder (Syacium papillosum) as indicators of aquatic environmental health of the Yucatan Shelf (YS) prior to oil extraction. We sampled the dusky flounder and its parasites along the YS, mostly during the 2015 north wind season (November–April). Our aims were: (...
Las comunidades bentónicas dependen de su capacidad de locomoción, estadios larvales y patrones de corrientes para ampliar distribución y asegurar su persistencia en el tiempo. La diversidad beta evalúa cambios en la composición de la comunidad, determinando la pérdida de especies o cambios en la identidad de las mismas; mientras que los índices de...
Renewable energy resources are now of growing interest and so is the technology to use them. From the available ocean energy resources, salinity gradients are the least studied. The natural coastal processes in countries within the tropics, like Mexico, generously provide the essentials for the development of intense salinity gradients: abundant ra...
Coastlines around the world are facing significant damage from increasing urban development and population density, additional infrastructure of diverse sectors and ecosystem degradation. Engineers are increasingly called upon to provide structures that give protection against wave attack, coastal flooding and erosion. Generally, these protective m...
Vast coastal water bodies such as mangroves and wetlands, despite their enormous importance, are inaccessible to even the smallest aquatic vehicles, which are not capable of navigating the extremely shallow environments. To understand their behavior and the transport and exchange processes with both sea and land, it is crucial to study local hydrod...
de la Lanza-Espino, G.; Silva, R.; Hernández-Pulido, S.; Mariño-Tapia, I., and Enríquez, C., 2017. A retrospective analysis of water quality in an open bay on the Mexican Pacific. In: Martinez, M.L.; Taramelli, A., and Silva, R. (eds.), Coastal Resilience: Exploring the Many Challenges from Different Viewpoints. Journal of Coastal Research, Special...
The ecological integrity and overall health conditions of natural coastal systems are largely based upon the balance among physical processes. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of tides and winds on the water level variability, circulation patterns, and turnover time in Bahia de la Ascension (BA), a shallow, tropical coastal bay...
Submarine groundwater discharge provides freshwater and nutrients to coastal environments. In some places throughout the world, this direct connection between aquifers and oceans may also allow saltwater intrusion. Saltwater intrusion was studied at a submarine spring within a fringing reef lagoon on the eastern Yucatán Peninsula by observing its i...
Ruiz-Martínez, G.; Mariño-Tapia, I.; Mendoza Baldwin, E.G.; Silva Casarín, R., and Enríquez Ortiz, C.E., 0000. Identifying coastal defence schemes through morphodynamic numerical simulations along the northern coast of Yucatan, Mexico.
A beach segment on the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, where sandy beaches have widespread erosion proble...
This chapter assesses the hazards and vulnerability to tropical cyclones of the overdeveloped beach-lagoon system at Cancun in Mexico. It analyzes and models the observations of the record-breaking category 5 Hurricane Wilma of October 2005. This study describes the degree of vulnerability of Cancun beach and discusses the hazards that should be ta...
Upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters at the NE corner of the Yucatan Peninsula is known to enhance productivity over the Yucatan Shelf, fueling fisheries and harboring the largest global aggregation of whale sharks. Nevertheless, the physical processes that control this upwelling and the spreading of upwelled waters onto the Yucatan Shelf are no...
Variations in discharge and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) were studied at a point-source submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), within a fringing reef lagoon, from quadrature (neap) to syzygy (spring) tides. The principal factors affecting discharge and TKE variations were tides and waves. Field data indicated discharge and TKE varied with high an...
A comprehensive field experiment devoted to the study of coastal processes on a micro-tidal beach was conducted from March 30th to April 12th 2014 in Sisal, Yucatán México. Wave conditions in the study area are controlled by local (i.e., sea-breezes) and meso-scale (i.e., Nortes) meteorological events. Simultaneous measurements of waves, tides, win...
The influence of sea level variations due to tides and wave setup on turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) was observed at a point source submarine groundwater discharge in a fringing coral reef lagoon. Tidal and wave setup variations modulated speed, TKE, TKE dissipation, and water temperature and salinity at the buoyant jet. The primary driver of jet TK...
Vidal-Juárez, T.; Ruiz de Alegría-Arzaburu, A.; Mejía-Trejo, A.; García-Nava, H., and Enriquez, C., 2014. Predicting barrier beach breaching due to extreme water levels at San Quintín, Baja California, México. This study comprises a first approach to numerically determine the hydrodynamic conditions leading to barrier breaching at San Quintín, loca...
It has been widely documented that coral reefs play a very important role in the dissipation of wave energy. Observations of beach morphology, made before and after a major hurricane that hit SE Mexico in October 2005 (Wilma), show widespread erosion at an exposed beach (Cancun), but unexpected beach accretion 25 km south at a beach fronted by a fr...
González-Leija, M.; Mariño-Tapia, I.; Silva, R.; Enriquez, C.; Mendoza, E.; Escalante-Mancera, E.; Ruíz-Rentería, F., and Uc-Sánchez, E., 2013. Morphodynamic evolution and sediment transport processes of Cancun Beach. Large-scale construction of tourist infrastructure on beaches around the world is consistently linked to unwanted morphological chan...
This paper examines the degree of energy dissipation provided by a
fringing coral reef, and its role on the morphodynamics of adjacent
beaches in terms of volumetric sediment transport. Morphological data
were collected from the microtidal Mexican Caribbean beaches of Puerto
Morelos, fringed by a reef, and Cancun, without a reef, from September
200...
The detailed thermohaline structure of the northern Yucatan coastal zone was obtained for the first time in order to gain an insight into the interactions between various processes in this complex tropical environment of extreme evaporation and high precipitation rates. From the continent, it has water exchange with numerous coastal lagoons (rangin...
El estado de Tabasco, México, es altamente vulnerable a inundaciones. La más grave de los últimos años fue en 2007 y cubrió el 62% de su territorio. A raíz de este suceso surgió el Plan Hídrico Integral de Tabasco, con el objeto de encontrar soluciones para disminuir la vulnerabilidad de la zona ante eventos extremos.
Una de ellas consiste en el de...
The state of Tabasco is highly vulnerable to flooding, with the most serious in recent years occuring in 2007, covering 62% of its territory. For this reason, the Comprehensive Water Plan of Tabasco was created in order to identify solutions to diminish the vulnerability of this area to extreme events. One of the possible solutions is to divert lar...
The morphological response of two adjacent beaches, on the Mexican Caribbean coast, exposed to the same offshore wave climate is compared, where one of the beaches is fringed by a coral reef and the other is not. Detailed topographic and bathymetric measurements were collected from 2007 to 2011 using a differential GPS and double-frequency echo-sou...
The International Conference on Coastal Engineering (ICCE) is a biennial conference held under the auspices of the Coastal Engineering Research Council of the COPRI (Coasts, Oceans, Ports, Rivers Institute) of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The Proceedings of the ICCE are provided here, with papers covering a wide range of topics includin...
This investigation presents an integrated study for the identification of coastal and fluvial forcing, in the generation of flood events in the lower area of the Tonalá River. The methodology is designed to reduce some of the uncertainties in the results and is comprised by high-quality field measurements, a two-dimensional numerical model and ligh...
This investigation presents an integrated study for the identification of coastal and fluvial forcing, in the generation of flood events in the lower area of the Tonalá River. The methodology is designed to reduce some of the uncertainties in the results and is comprised by high-quality field measurements, a two-dimensional numerical model and ligh...
This investigation presents an integrated study for the identification of coastal and fluvial forcing, in the generation of flood events in the lower area of the Tonalá River. The methodology is designed to reduce some of the uncertainties in the results and is comprised by high-quality field measurements, a two-dimensional numerical model and ligh...
This investigation comprises the hydraulic characterisation of a river located in the Mexican State of Tabasco, including the performance of its flood plain under the action of an extreme river discharge. This is done through the combination of a high‐quality validation dataset, remote sensing information, and a standard 2D numerical model. The dat...
In many coastal regions, groundwater is the main water source for humans. However, because of population growth and sea-level rise, many coastal aquifers increasingly suffer from salt intrusion, especially in karstic areas where the high permeability and porosity of the rock favours salt penetration. We collected field data from a Mexican karst sys...
Time series of hydrography, water velocity and hydrostatic pressure at a site of submarine freshwater discharge to a fringing reef lagoon and at an inlet that communicates the lagoon with the coastal ocean are used to deter mine the effects of tides and waves on modulating the freshwater delivery. Data were collected over a three-day period in July...
Velocity and hydrography measurements were used to determine the tidal variability and detailed structure of an intense (approximate to 43,200 m(3) d(-1)) point-source submarine groundwater discharge from a spring located in the coastal ocean of the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. Measurements were obtained during a dry season with a combination of towe...
The mechanisms governing dispersion processes in the northern Yucatan coast are investigated using a barotropic numerical model of coastal circulation, which includes wind-generated and large scale currents (i.e. Yucatan Current). This work provides the foundations for studying the dispersion of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the area. Modelling ex...
In situ measurements of hurricane driven waves are scarse. Existing studies have been carried out with remote sensing and datawell buoys under conditions of mature seas, where the inverse wave age (U10/Cp) is ~ 1. Under these circumstances, the energy spectrum has no tendency for bimodal distributions in either frequency or direction. The swell is...
This contribution presents detailed measurements of fresh water fluxes from an energetic submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) located on the coastal ocean on Dzilam Bravo, Yucatan, Mexico. Due to the geologic characteristics of the site (karstic geology), inland groundwater flows through karstic conduits and exits at sea. Time series of fluxes mea...
In the Yucatan peninsula there are a variety processes that drastically affect the thermohaline structure of the coastal seas. Some of these include hyperhaline lagoons that export salt to the ocean, upwelling events that propagate to the coast, persistent submarine groundwater discharges, and very high evaporation rates caused by the intense solar...