Celso M. Ferreira

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at George Mason University

The Arctic region is experiencing significant changes due to climate change, and the resulting decline in sea ice concentration and extent is already impacting ocean dynamics and exacerbating coastal hazards in the region. In this context, numerical models play a crucial role in simulating the interactions between the ocean, land, sea ice, and atmo...

Salt marshes act as natural barriers that reduce wave energy during storm events and help protect coastal communities located in low-lying areas. This ecosystem can be an important asset for climate adaptation due to its particular capability of vertically accrete to adjust to long-term changes in water levels. Therefore, understanding marsh protec...

Declining Arctic sea ice over recent decades has been linked to growth in coastal hazards affecting the Alaskan Arctic. In this study, climate model projections of sea ice are utilized in the simulation of an extratropical cyclone to quantify how future changes in seasonal ice coverage could affect coastal waves caused by this extreme event. All fu...

In the National Capital Region, existing coastal flood guidance systems frequently underestimate total water levels (TWL), leading to inaccurate flood predictions. Flood forecasting in this region, located at the confluence of two major rivers (Potomac and Anacostia) with tidal connections to the Chesapeake Bay, faces TWL under-predictions due to m...

Sea level rise (SLR) is the most significant climate change-related threat to coastal wetlands, driving major transformations in coastal regions through marsh migration. Landscape transformations due to marsh migration are manifested in terms of horizontal and vertical changes in land cover and elevation, respectively. These processes will have an...

Floods and droughts significantly affect agricultural activities and pose a threat to food security by subsequently reducing agricultural production. The impact of flood events is distributed disproportionately among agricultural communities based on their socio-economic fabric. Understanding climate-related hazards is critical for planning mitigat...

Coastal communities are vulnerable to wave and storm surges during extreme events, highlighting the need to increase community resilience. The effectiveness of natural wetlands in attenuating waves is vital to designing strategies for protecting public safety. This study aimed to understand how vegetation attenuates waves and determine the best met...

The observed retreat and anticipated further decline in Arctic sea ice hold strong climate, environmental, and societal implications. In predicting climate evolution, ensembles of coupled climate models have demonstrated appreciable accuracy in simulating sea ice area and volume trends throughout the historical period. However, individual climate m...

In much of the USA, Phragmites australis is a prolific invasive species in wetland habitats. The spread of Phragmites can significantly alter the structure and function of a marsh, thereby altering the ecosystem services that the marsh provides. It remains unclear how Phragmites invasion may impact coastal protection, despite the substantial implic...

Wave–vegetation interaction is implemented in the WAVEWATCH III (WW3) model. The vegetation sink term followed the early formulations of Dalrymple et al. (Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering, 1984, 110, 67–79), which focused on monochromatic waves and vegetation approximated as an array of rigid, vertical cylinders, and was la...

Many large metropolitan areas are especially susceptible to floods generated by heavy, short-duration rainfall. The high density of people, buildings and infrastructure in these areas underline the importance of developing flood resilient cities and communities. An accurate real-time flood forecasting system can support decision making for launchin...

The significant increase in the Arctic open-water extent along with the earlier sea-ice summer melt and later autumn freeze-up seasons observed in the last decades allow the formation of less fetch-limited waves and the further propagation of storm surges to new ice-free shores. Coupled hydrodynamic and wave models can be used to simulate these com...

The intensification of extreme precipitation in a warming climate is expected to increase flood risk. In order to support flood resilience efforts, it is important to anticipate and quantify potential changes in design standards under future climate conditions. This study assessed how extreme precipitation is expected to change over the 21st centur...

Quantifying the spatially varying nearshore wave characteristics and energy dissipation mechanisms is of utmost importance for several coastal management and engineering applications as well as for flood hazard assessment. This study presents the ArcGIS Wave Transformation toolbox (ArcWaT), a model-based GIS toolbox for estimating wave transformati...

Vulnerability of coastal regions to extreme events motivates an operational coupled inland-coastal modeling strategy focusing on the coastal transition zone (CTZ), an area between the coast and upland river. To tackle this challenge, we propose a top-down framework for investigating the contribution of different processes to the hydrodynamics of CT...

Much of the United States Atlantic coastline continues to undergo subsidence due to post glacial settlement and ground water depletion. Combined with eustatic sea level rise (SLR), this contributes to an increased rate of relative SLR. In this work, we utilize the ADvanced CIRCulation model to project storm surges across coastal North Carolina. Rec...

Changes in timing of snowmelt‐fed streamflow have great importance for water supply, flood management, and ecological processes, as well as being a common indicator of climate change. In this study, snowmelt runoff timing change in the contiguous United States between 1957 and 2016 was investigated by analysing data from 97 streamflow gages. The an...

Along the North Atlantic coasts of the United States, sea levels are rising at higher rates than the global average. Additionally, sea level rise (SLR) can cause reduction and redistribution of wetlands across the low-lying coastal landscape. This study applied a coupled storm surge and waves model to the Chesapeake Bay regions that are prone to SL...

Temporal variations of de facto wastewater reuse are relevant to public drinking water systems (PWSs) that obtain water from surface sources. Variations in wastewater discharge flows, streamflow, de facto reuse, and disinfection by-products (DBPs – trihalomethane-4 [THM4] and haloacetic acid-5 [HAA5]) over an 18-year period were examined at 11 PWSs...

Research Impact Statement: Delft3D-FM and 2D HEC-RAS can satisfactorily predict total water level depending on forcing conditions of extreme events. Simulations with Delft3D-FM can be faster than HEC-RAS by a factor of 6 to 10. ABSTRACT: Hydrodynamic models play a key role in simulating total water level (TWL), that is, a combination of river flow,...

Flood events are one of the most destructive and yet increasingly frequent natural hazards causing a considerable amount of economic losses in the United States (US). The agricultural sector is particularly vulnerable to flood hazards. The representation of spatiotemporal distributions of the agricultural damage and the vulnerability of the agricul...

Coastal flooding operational forecasting in the US is limited to short-range temporal scales (3–7 days), which limits the response time for emergency preparation and planning. The sub-seasonal prediction project (SubX), which produces weather forecasts with a lead time of up to four weeks, provides an opportunity to assess the potential for creatin...

Sea level rise and intense hurricane events make the East and Gulf Coasts of the United States increasingly vulnerable to flooding, which necessitates the development of computational models for accurate water level simulation in these areas to safeguard the coastal wellbeing. With this regard, a model framework for water level simulation over coas...

Much of the United States Atlantic coastline continues to subside due to post glacial settlement and ground water depletion. Combined with sea level rise (SLR), this contributes to a larger relative rate of SLR regionwide. In this work, we utilize the ADvanced CIRCulation model to simulate storm surges across coastal North Carolina. Simulations of...

The co-occurrence of different flood types (i.e. compound floods), such as coastal storms, riverine flow, and urban pluvial runoff, can cause severe damage to urban areas. Like many U.S. metropolitan regions along the coast, the Washington, DC metropolitan area, where increasing precipitation rates and sea-level rise have been observed, is vulnerab...

Coastal wetlands provide a series of ecosystem services, including flood risk reduction. However, the flood risk reduction from such a complex ecosystem is dependent on incoming extreme hurricane-driven hydrodynamic and wave conditions. This study develops a numerical modeling-based approach for investigating coastal wetlands exposure to storm surg...

The Southern Brazilian Coast is highly susceptible to storm surges that often lead to coastal flooding and erosive processes, significantly impacting coastal communities. In addition, climate change is expected to result in expressive increases in wave heights due to more intense and frequent storms, which, in conjunction with sea-level rise (SLR),...

2020. The Authors. This study reports a new and significantly enhanced analysis of US flood hazard at 30 m spatial resolution. Specific improvements include updated hydrography data, new methods to determine channel depth, more rigorous flood frequency analysis, output downscaling to property tract level, and inclusion of the impact of local interv...

Coastal flooding is a global phenomenon that results in severe economic losses, threatens lives, and impacts coastal communities worldwide. While recent developments in real-time flood forecasting systems provide crucial information to support coastal communities during coastal disasters, there remains a challenge to implement such systems in data-...

Real-time flood forecasting computational frameworks that can dynamically integrate oceanic, coastal and estuarine processes are becoming essential to provide accurate and timely information for emergency response and planning in largely populated estuaries during extreme events. This study presents a newly developed real-time total water flood gui...

Storm surge and sea level rise (SLR) are affecting coastal communities, properties, and ecosystems. While coastal ecosystems, such as wetlands and marshes, have the capacity to reduce the impacts of storm surge and coastal flooding, the increasing rate of SLR can induce the transformation and migration of these natural habitats. In this study, we c...

De facto reuse is increasingly being studied among the variety of stressors that are relevant to drinking water systems that obtain their source water from surface waters. De facto reuse may influence the levels and types of precursors relevant to formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs) in surface water systems. DBPs such as trihalomethanes (T...

This study investigates the capacity of a Spartina alterniflora meadow to attenuate waves during storm events based on field observations in the Chesapeake Bay. These observations reveal that environmental conditions including the ratio between water depth and plant height (hr), the ratio between wave height (HS) and water depth, and current direct...

Storm surge induced by tropical cyclones (TCs) has become a global concern due to its catastrophic and expensive impacts on many coastal and tropical areas. It is also evident that global sea level rise (SLR) is expected to amplify coastal flood risk in the future. The exposure and vulnerability to flooding due to storm surge and SLR are particular...

Assessing the accuracy of nearshore numerical models—such as SWAN—is important to ensure their effectiveness in representing physical processes and predicting flood hazards. In particular, for application to coastal wetlands, it is important that the model accurately represents wave attenuation by vegetation. In SWAN, vegetation might be implemente...

Saltmarshes have the potential to protect coastal communities from the impact of waves caused by severe storms. While recent developments in numerical models are enhancing the simulation of wave-vegetation interactions, the estimation of the drag coefficient (C d ), used to account for the reduction of wave energy by vegetation, is still a source o...

The increasing rate of sea level rise (SLR) poses a major threat to coastal lands and natural resources, especially affecting natural preserves and protected areas along the coast. These impacts are likely to exacerbate when combined with storm surges. It is also expected that SLR will cause spatial reduction and migration of coastal wetland and ma...

Accurate forecast of sea-level heights in coastal areas depends, among other factors, upon a reliable coupling of a meteorological forecast system to a hydrodynamic and wave system. This study evaluates the predictive skills of the coupled circulation and wind-wave model system (ADCIRC+SWAN) for simulating storm tides in the Chesapeake Bay, forced...

The recurrent flood risks due to storm surge on coastal areas in the United States are expected to increase with changing climate and growing population. Studies show that global financial losses from hurricanes will be doubled by 2100 due to the combined effect of sea level rise (SLR), more frequent and intensified storm. The increasing rate of SL...

Hurricanes and tropical storms represent one of the major hazards in coastal communities. Storm surge generated by strong winds and low pressure from these systems have the potential to bring extensive flooding in coastal areas. In many cases, the damage caused by the storm surge may exceed the damage from the wind resulting in the total collapse o...

The authors wish to make the following corrections to their paper [1]. In the third paragraph on Page 14, "PRC, W, and PRC" should be changed to "PRC, W, and PRW". Moreover, the authors found that Figure 6 has an incorrect legend. It should be as follows: The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused. The change does not affect t...

Coastal communities and cities in Mid-Atlantic regions of the US are frequently threatened by flood damages and erosion due to hurricane wind, storm surge and waves. With a changing climate, sea level rise (SLR) and intensified storms, the damage due to hurricanes is expected to increase. Hard structures have long been used for coastal flood protec...

Among the many activities in the recent efforts to evaluate coastal resiliency is the study of the capacity of wetlands and coastal marshes to attenuate storm surge. The development of an acceptable index or attenuation rate for coastal flooding is complicated by the many factors that contribute to maximum surge elevation, inundation extent and dur...

The recurrent flood risks on coastal areas in the United States (US) due to hurricane wind and storm surge are likely to rise with warmer climate, frequent storms, and increasing coastal population. Recent studies suggested that the global financial losses from hurricanes will be doubled by 2100 due to combined impact of climate change, sea level r...

The coastal areas of Bangladesh are recognized by the United Nations (UN) as the most vulnerable areas in the world to tropical cyclones and also the sixth most vulnerable country to floods around the world. Cyclone Sidr (2007) was one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in Bangladesh causing nearly 10,000 deaths and $1.7 billion damage. Dur...

Coastal wetlands are receiving increased consideration as natural defenses for coastal communities from storm surge. However, there are gaps in storm surge measurements collected in marsh areas during extreme events as well as understanding of storm surge processes. The present study evaluates the importance and variation of different processes (i....

In the United States (US), coastal states are frequently threatened by flood damages and coastal erosion due to hurricane wind and storm surges. Recent studies indicate that the global financial losses from hurricanes will be doubled by 2100 due to the combined effect of climate change, sea-level rise (SLR), the predicted hurricane intensification...

Large estuaries are especially vulnerable to coastal flooding due to the potential of combined storm surges and riverine flows. Numerical models can support flood prevention and planning for coastal communities. However, while recent advancements in the development of numerical models for storm surge prediction have led to robust and accurate model...

Bangladesh is vulnerable to several natural disasters and cyclone-generated storm surges have resulted in the deaths of over 700 000 people since 1960. Advancing our capability to model and simulate storm surges using numerical models is utmost important to support early warning and emergency response efforts in the region. This study primarily exp...

Common engineering methods for the computation of peak discharge are generally based on the assumption of a stationary watershed. This assumption can potentially lead to inaccurate estimates of peak discharge when considering the lifetime of engineering structures. Future land use change is one of the possible causes of non-stationarity in watershe...

Garzon, J.L.; Ferreira, C.; Dalrymple, R. A., and Guikema, S.D., 2016. Efficient integration of a storm surge model into a multidisciplinary agent based model framework. In: Vila-Concejo, A.; Bruce, E.; Kennedy, D.M., and McCarroll, R.J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Coastal Symposium (Sydney, Australia). Journal of Coastal Research...

In August 2012, Hurricane Isaac, a Category 1 hurricane at landfall, caused extensive power outages in Louisiana. The storm brought high winds, storm surge, and flooding to Louisiana, and power outages were widespread and prolonged. Hourly power outage data for the state of Louisiana were collected during the storm and analyzed. This analysis inclu...

The expectation that wetlands can protect coastal communities has been a major topic in the effort to evaluate innovative methods of mitigating coastal impacts from storm surge. Recent investigations have shown that there is a potential flood mitigation benefit to be gained from the presence of marshes. Though the extent of that benefit is not yet...

Previous numerical modeling studies have supported the expectation that wetlands have the potential to attenuate storm surge, and have improved understanding of the interconnected factors that impact their hydrodynamic response: storm characteristics, surrounding landscape, local surface roughness and vegetation characteristics. Among the many chal...

Hurricane Sandy in 2012 demonstrated the vulnerability of the East Coast to extreme events, especially considering projected land development, population growth, and the impacts of sea level rise. These compounding factors have motivated the exploration of resilient coastal defenses that incorporate both hard engineering (i.e., levees, seawalls, br...

It is expected that coastal wetlands, in addition to their ecological importance, can reduce the damaging impacts of storm surge, acting as a natural protection against hurricane flooding (Barbier et al 2013, Gedan et al 2010). Past studies have demonstrated the potential of wetlands to attenuate storm surge and waves, and shown that the attenuatio...

Precipitation quantile estimates are used in engineering, agriculture, and a variety of other disciplines. Index flood regional frequency methods pool normalized gauge data in the case of homogeneity among the constituent gauges of the region. Unitless regional quantile estimates are outputted and rescaled at each gauge. Because violation of the ho...

At low sample size, sampling error may be reduced by pooling multiple gauge records. This creates an error component due to heterogeneity, the degree to which the pooled regional data's quantile estimates are different from the true at-site quantiles. Heterogeneity statistics attempt to quantify the degree to which error is added due to regional he...

During emergencies in urban areas, it is paramount to assess damage to people, property, and environment in order to coordinate relief operations and evacuations. Remote sensing has become the de facto standard for observing the Earth and its environment through the use of air-, space-, and ground-based sensors. These sensors collect massive amount...

Abstract In this study we investigated the impacts of potential changes of land cover due to sea-level rise (SLR) on storm surge (i.e., the rise of water above normal sea level, namely mean-sea level and the astronomical tide, caused by hurricane winds and pressure) response inside bays on the lower Texas coast. We applied a hydrodynamic and wave m...

The Chesapeake Bay area is subject to storm surge from extreme weather events nearly year-round; from tropical storms and hurricanes during the summer and fall, (e.g., hurricanes Isabel [2003] and Sandy [2012]), and from nor’easters during the winter (e.g., winter storms Nemo and Saturn [2013]). It is largely believed that wetlands have the poten...

Estimating precipitation frequency is important in engineering, agriculture, land use planning, and many other disciplines. The index flood method alleviates small sample size issues due to short record length by calculating normalized quantile estimates for averaged data from a "region" of gauges. For a perfectly homogeneous region this adds no er...

Rivers or watercourses in Sylhet plain of Bangladesh are very dynamic over time. The aim of the present study is to investigate the channel planform dynamics, the prediction of future lateral migration of the bankline and assessment of the hazards associated with Manu River, Bangladesh. The name Manu River represents the river study reach from Trip...

storm surge is one of the most costly natural hazards in the United States. Numerical modeling to predict and estimate hurricane surge flooding is currently widely used for research, planning, decision making, and emergency response. Land cover plays an important role in hurricane surge numerical modeling because of its impacts on the forcing (chan...

Arc StormSurge is a data model that integrates geographic information systems and the hurricane wave and surge model SWAN+ADCIRC, which is the coupling of the Simulating WAves Nearshore (SWAN) wave model and the Advanced Circulation (ADCIRC) hydrodynamic model. The Arc StormSurge data model is a geodatabase, which is a relational database that can...

The Chesapeake Bay, Virginia is subject to storm surge from extreme weather events nearly year-round; from tropical storms and hurricanes during the summer and fall, (e.g., hurricanes Isabel [2003] and Sandy [2012]), and from nor’easters during the winter (e.g., winter storms Nemo and Saturn [2013]). Coastal wetlands can deliver acute fortification...

Flood maps are a crucial tool to support emergency management, disaster recovery and risk reduction planning. Traditional flood mapping methods are time-consuming, labor intensive, and costly. Our goal in this paper is to introduce a novel technique to aggregate knowledge and information to map coastal flooded areas. We proposed a Difference of Nor...

Assessment of hurricane flooding risk is an essential component for effective coastal planning and engineering design. Existing methods for evaluating extreme-value flood statistics traditionally assume that flood conditions are stationary, such that historical information represents future conditions. However, dynamic changes in the environment, s...