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Published September 15, 2007 | Accepted Version + Published
Journal Article Open

Optimal Pollution Mitigation in Monterey Bay Based on Coastal Radar Data and Nonlinear Dynamics

Abstract

High-frequency (HF) radar technology produces detailed velocity maps near the surface of estuaries and bays. The use of velocity data in environmental prediction, nonetheless, remains unexplored. In this paper, we uncover a striking flow structure in coastal radar observations of Monterey Bay, along the California coastline. This complex structure governs the spread of organic contaminants, such as agricultural runoff which is a typical source of pollution in the bay. We show that a HF radar-based pollution release scheme using this flow structure reduces the impact of pollution on the coastal environment in the bay. We predict the motion of the Lagrangian flow structures from finite-time Lyapunov exponents of the coastal HF velocity data. From this prediction, we obtain optimal release times, at which pollution leaves the bay most efficiently.

Additional Information

© 2007 American Chemical Society. Received for review December 23, 2006. Revised manuscript received June 12, 2007. Accepted June 20, 2007. Publication Date (Web): August 17, 2007. Published In Issue September 15, 2007 The CODAR data used in this paper have been prepared by Michael Cook and Daniel Atwater. We are also grateful to Tricia Wilson (Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve), Thomas C. O'Reilly, and Thomas Hoover (Monterey Bay Research Institute) for providing us with valuable information about the sources and the transport of contaminants in the slough and the Moss Landing area. The GPS fix for the Duke power plant outfall and some of the pictures in the manuscript were taken onboard Moss Landing Marine Lab's Research Vessel John H. Martin. We thank Capt. Lee Bradford (Moss Landing Marine Laboratories), Bruce Howe (University of Washington), and Fumin Zhang (Princeton University) for their assistance. The aerial pictures were taken by an unmanned camera onboard the UV-18A Twin Otter of the Naval Postgraduate School of Monterey and the Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Studies. We thank Steven Ramp and Todd Anderson (NPS) for providing us with these data. We are also grateful to Naomi Leonard, Eddie Fiorelli, and Fumin Zhang (Princeton University) for enlightening discussions throughout this work. Integrated particles and Lagrangian coherent structures for this paper were computed using ManGen (http://www.lekien.com/~francois/software/mangen). This research was funded by the Office of Naval Research (grant N00014-01- 1-0208 and ASAP MURI N00014-02-1-0826). We thank Thomas Curtin, Manuel Fiadero, and Reza Malek-Madani for their support and helpful comments.

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Accepted Version - CoLePa2007.pdf

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Created:
August 19, 2023
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October 20, 2023