A Partnership for Modeling the Marine Environment of Puget Sound, Washington - Puget Sound Naval Shipyard/Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Report

Part of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP)

Estuaries, fjords and sounds are important, major components of marine ecosystems worldwide. Because of this, and their generally poor treatment by man, large estuaries should be the focus of large scale, multidisciplinary, integrative modeling efforts. We need to both understand how these systems work, and be able to predict how they will respond to changes, whether natural or anthropogenic. Puget Sound, Washington State's largest inland sea, is both the largest fjord in the lower forty-eight states and closest to the substantial urban centers. Relative to other coastal systems, Pacific Northwest fjords have seasonally high annual phytoplankton standing stock and primary production, and they support several economically valuable fisheries. Our long-term goals are to develop quantitative understanding of the seasonal and longer time-scale variability of the Sound's circulation, roles of water column stratification, nutrients, and light (and their interactions) on phytoplankton and zooplankton dynamics, and the sensitivity of the physical and the biological system to natural and human perturbations. We will develop models of Puget Sound that can aid agencies with responsibilities for environmental management in making informed decisions and serve as marine science education tools. A special emphasis for this component of the project is to develop an inlet-scale integrated modeling system that will include the hydrodynamic and contaminant transport within the receiving waters of Sinclair and Dyes Inlets, the surrounding watershed, and the boundaries with the Greater Puget Sound System. During the FY2006 reporting period, PSNS/SPAWAR partners have successfully completed a joint current meter study with Ecology partners for Agate, Port Orchard and Rich Passages, extracted data from the POM output for input as boundary conditions for the Sinclair/Dyes Inlet model, developed a set of analysis tools to process model output, and implemented the linkage between the models.