San Pedro Bay/Orange County Focus Region - Nearshore and Surfzone Observations
Movies and fly-throughs are available from the SIO Visualization Center.
Visualizations have been created by Dane Samilo, Thomas Im, Jennifer Matthews, Lisa Hazard, Atul Nayak, and Carolyn Keen. The Center for Earth Observations and Applications (CEOA) sponsored the visualization work with partial funding from the San Diego Foundation's Blasker Science and Technology grant and the NSF funded LOOKINGproject.
The nearshore, defined as the region extending from the shoreline to approximately 2km offshore (roughly 30m water depth), consists of the surfzone (within a few ~100m of the shoreline) and the transition zone (seaward of the surfzone). The nearshore is the most heavily used part of the coastal ocean, and is also the region where water quality is most seriously impacted by pollutants.
Although nearshore currents are critical to prediction of the fate and origin of point and non-point pollutants, they cannot be observed continuously in time over large areas because they are inshore of HF radar coverage. To improve prediction of nearshore currents, in-situ observations spanning relatively small regions for limited time periods will be used to validate and calibrate nearshore models that can be applied continuously over larger areas. The sites selected for intensive observations have persistent, serious water quality problems so the resulting current maps will also be useful, site-specific near-realtime products.
The region of focus observation for the nearshore and surfzone components will be in the San Pedro Bay/Orange County region. San Pedro Bay impacts a large population base where there is great public interest in beach water quality. Contrary to public opinion, the outfall has not been proven to be the major source of contamination. Land-based sources are known to be bacterial contributors. The Santa Ana River is a known source of bacteria that is readily advected alongshore by the wave-driven surf zone transport. The alongshore propagation is easily observed in hourly bacterial data during spring tide events. San Pedro Bay has a good historical data set. The Orange County Sanitation District has maintained a mooring (currents and temperature) near their outfall for several years. There was an intensive field effort in 2001 that included 12-13 moorings, effluent plume mapping, and shoreline bacteria sampling at hourly intervals during 6 spring tide events. (see http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/of03-62/ ) The Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) has already identified itself as a partner for this focused effort. They have several moorings, in addition to their permanent outfall mooring, which will be made available as outside resources to the SCCOOS focused study site.
Complementary observations of nearshore currents will be made with drifters, bottom mounted surfzone sensors, and ADCPs mounted on moorings and on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The moorings will include thermistor chains and a bottom pressure sensor. The drifters provide trajectories of passive, near-surface pollutants. The continuous velocities over the water column provided at a few locations by moored ADCPs are complemented by the spatially extensive observations of AUV-mounted ADCPs. ADCPs perform poorly in bubbly surfzone waters, so single-point flowmeters (ADVs) will be used.
There are several key factors which affect nearshore transport of pollutants in this region that will be addressed by SCCOOS during this effort. These factors are:
These moorings are operated by:
Uwe Send
More information about the HB06 Moorings:
SIO-C2These buoys are administered by:
Julie ThomasThe Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP) deploys Datawell buoys equipped with three accelerometers measuring north/south; east/west; and vertical displacements. As result, these instruments can measure both wave direction and wave energy. Data is transmitted in real-time for display and input into forecasting models.
A description of the Spray Glider, developed at SIO's Instrument Development Group under the supervision of Russ Davis, can be found at: http://spray.ucsd.edu
These instruments are situated in the surfzone to measure alongshore currents.
These sensors are mounted to the bottom of the sea floor and measure current velocity.
These moorings are operated by:
George Robertson