A Partnership for Modeling the Marine Environment of Puget Sound, Washington
Abstract
Puget Sound, Washington, is both the largest fjord in the lower forty-eight states and closest to the substantial urban centers of Seattle, Tacoma, Everett and surrounding communities. The sound has seasonally high annual phytoplankton standing stock and primary production, and they support several economically valuable fisheries. This partnership's long-term goals are to develop quantitative understanding of the Sound's circulation and marine ecosystem, and of the sensitivity of the physical and the biological system to natural and human perturbations; and to 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. The partnership will develop, maintain and operate a suite of flexibly linked simulation models of Puget Sound's circulation and ecosystem, a data management system for archiving and exchanging oceanographic data, and model results that are accessible to all members of the partnership as well as to the regional and oceanographic community, and an effective delivery interface for the model results and observational data for research, education and policy formulation. This partnership will conduct scientific research aimed at developing fundamental understanding of the Sound's working, as well as addressing practical questions raised by the regional community concerning management of the Sound and its resources. This partnership will function as an estuarine research node within the NOPP Ocean Information Commons. Collectively, the partners are operating or developing four dynamically based, predictive models of the Sound's aquatic environment, each with a different spatial coverage (and a fifth module for biogeochemistry), and their goal is to integrate these modeling efforts into a coordinated whole.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA484005
Entities
People
- Allan Devol
- Frederick R. Stahr
- Jan Newton
- Mark Warner
- Miles Logsdon
- Mitsuhiro Kawase
- Pengfei Wang
- Robert K. Johnston
- Skip Albertson
- W. P. Winn
Organizations
- University of Washington