Static Monitoring versus Directional Water Quality Data for Coastal Monitoring Programs

Henry Briceno, United States, Raymond Najjar, The Pennsylvania State University, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, University Park, United States, Chuanmin Hu, University of South Florida St. Petersburg, Optical Oceanography, St Petersburg, FL, United States, Maria Herrmann, The Pennsylvania State University, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, University Park, PA, United States, David C English, University of South Florida Tampa, Tampa, FL, United States, Reinaldo F Garcia, Organization Not Listed, Washington, DC, United States and Jeff Absten, Florida International University, Miami, United States
Abstract:
Most water quality monitoring programs in coastal waters are performed by simply measuring some water properties in the field (e.g. temperature, salinity, DO, CHLa, etc) and collecting water samples to analyze them for their chemical composition. Then, each site is assumed to be characterized by such set of water properties without considering the dynamics of the water body. That differs from what we do when sampling streams or canals, where there is an automatic assumption of dependency on the “upstream”, the watershed. The problem is when we sample in open waters, like bays or coastal areas, where the watershed is in fact 360 degrees around the station, and without current direction, we do not know the source of our sample. During an ongoing project funded by NASA, and executed by Penn State-USF-FIU to assess the response of carbon cycling to climatic and anthropogenic perturbations in two North American subtropical estuaries, Biscayne Bay and Tampa Bay, we have deployed instruments to measure water quality parameters while logging current azimuth and speed to assess water quality as a function of its potential upstream source. Results underscore the importance of current data.

The directional water quality data so obtained shows dramatic changes obeying to changes in current azimuth, especially in dissolved oxygen, fluorescent dissolved organic matter, pH and Chlorophyll. Currents resulting from either tidal flushing, winds or general ocean circulation cascades into significantly different water quality “types” underscoring the need of measuring currents for properly interpreting our datasets.

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