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Dispersal forcing of a southern California river plumes, based on field and remote sensing observations

River plumes are important pathways of terrestrial materials entering the sea. In southern California, rivers are known to be the dominant source of littoral, shelf and basin sediment and coastal pollution, although a basic understanding of the dynamics of these river inputs does not exist. Here we evaluate forcing parameters of a southern California river plume using ship-based hydrographic sur
Authors
Jonathan A. Warrick, Leal A.K. Mertes, Libe Washburn, David A. Siegel

Estimating suspended sediment concentrations in turbid coastal waters of the Santa Barbara Channel with SeaWiFS

A technique is presented for estimating suspended sediment concentrations of turbid coastal waters with remotely sensed multi-spectral data. The method improves upon many standard techniques, since it incorporates analyses of multiple wavelength bands (four for Sea-viewing Wide Field of view Sensor (SeaWiFS)) and a nonlinear calibration, which produce highly accurate results (expected errors are a
Authors
J.A. Warrick, L.A.K. Mertes, D.A. Siegel, C. Mackenzie

Sediment dynamics in the Adriatic Sea investigated with coupled models

Several large research programs focused on the Adriatic Sea in winter 2002-2003, making it an exciting place for sediment dynamics modelers (Figure 1). Investigations of atmospheric forcing and oceanic response (including wave generation and propagation, water-mass formation, stratification, and circulation), suspended material, bottom boundary layer dynamics, bottom sediment, and small-scale stra
Authors
Christopher R. Sherwood, Jeffrey W. Book, Sandro Carniel, Luigi Cavaleri, Jacopo Chiggiato, Himangshu Das, James D. Doyle, Courtney K. Harris, Alan W. Niedoroda, Henry Perkins, Pierre-Marie Poulain, Julie Pullen, Christopher W. Reed, Aniello Russo, Mauro Sclavo, Richard P. Signell, Peter A. Traykovski, John C. Warner

A new protocol for surveying elkhorn and staghorn coral

No abstract available.
Authors
Caroline Rogers, Christy Loomis, Barry E. Devine

The Chesapeake Bay Crater: Geology and geophysics of a Late Eocene submarine impact structure

The list of impact craters documented on Earth is short. Only about 165 genuine impact structures have been identified to date (Table 1.1). Even so, the number is steadily increasing at the rate of ∼3–5 per year (Grieve et al. 1995; Earth Impact Database at http://www.unb.ca/passc/Impact/Database/). In stark contrast, most other rocky planets and satellites of our solar system are pockmarked by th
Authors
C. Wylie Poag, Christian Koeberl, Wolf Uwe Reimold

Enhanced submarine ground water discharge form mixing of pore water and estuarine water

Submarine ground water discharge is suggested to be an important pathway for contaminants from continents to coastal zones, but its significance depends on the volume of water and concentrations of contaminants that originate in continental aquifers. Ground water discharge to the Banana River Lagoon, Florida, was estimated by analyzing the temporal and spatial variations of Cl− concentration profi
Authors
Jonathan B. Martin, Jaye E. Cable, Peter W. Swarzenski, Mary K. Lindenberg

Integrating digital information for coastal and marine sciences

A pilot distributed geolibrary, the Marine Realms Information Bank (MRIB), was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Geology Program and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to classify, integrate, and facilitate access to scientific information about oceans, coasts, and lakes. The MRIB is composed of a categorization scheme, a metadata database, and a specialized softwar
Authors
Fausto Marincioni, Frances L. Lightsom, Rebecca L. Riall, Guthrie A. Linck, Thomas C. Aldrich, Michael J. Caruso

Studying ground water under Delmarva coastal bays using electrical resistivity

Fresh ground water is widely distributed in subsurface sediments below the coastal bays of the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia). These conditions were revealed by nearly 300 km of streamer resistivity surveys, utilizing a towed multichannel cable system. Zones of high resistivity displayed by inversion modeling were confirmed by vibradrilling investigations to correspond to fr
Authors
Frank T. Manheim, David E. Krantz, John F. Bratton

Methane hydrate studies: Delineating properties of host sediments to establish reproducible decomposition kinetics

We have presented a summary of measurements on the physical properties of sediments relevant to methane hydrate recovery. The data includes not only geotechnical determinations, but also the CMT data that gives porosity values and pathways through the sediment material. The results show that CMT techniques can be used to study sediment properties on a micrometer-size scale. Since the technique is
Authors
Devinder Mahajan, Phillip Servio, Keith W. Jones, Huan Feng, William J. Winters

Economic impacts of anthropogenic activities on coastlines of the United States

Anthropogenic activities primarily impact coasts by reducing sediment inputs, altering sediment transport processes, and accelerating sediment losses to the offshore. These activities include: sand and gravel extraction, navigation and shore protection works; non-structural shoreline management strategies such as beach nourishment, sand by-passing and beach scraping, dams and flood control works;
Authors
Orville T. Magoon, S. Jeffress Williams, Linda K. Lent, James A. Richmond, Donald D. Treadwell, Scott L. Douglass, Billy L. Edge, Lesley C. Ewing, Anthony P. Pratt

Comparison of fluorescence microscopy and solid-phase cytometry methods for counting bacteria in water

Total direct counts of bacterial abundance are central in assessing the biomass and bacteriological quality of water in ecological and industrial applications. Several factors have been identified that contribute to the variability in bacterial abundance counts when using fluorescent microscopy, the most significant of which is retaining an adequate number of cells per filter to ensure an acceptab
Authors
John T. Lisle, Martin A. Hamilton, Alan R. Willse, Gordon A. McFeters