title: An assessment of the transport of southern California stormwater ocean discharges.
abstract: The dominant source of coastal pollution adversely affecting the regional coastal water quality is the seasonally variable urban runoff discharged via southern California's rivers. Here, we use a surface transport model of coastal circulation driven by current maps from high frequency radar to compute two-year hindcasts to assess the temporal and spatial statistics of 20 southern California stormwater discharges. These models provide a quantitative, statistical measure of the spatial extent of the discharge plumes in the coastal receiving waters, defined here as a discharge's "exposure". We use these exposure maps from this synthesis effort to (1) assess the probability of stormwater connectivity to nearby Marine Protected Areas, and (2) develop a methodology to estimate the mass transport of stormwater discharges. The results of the spatial and temporal analysis are found to be relevant to the hindcast assessment of coastal discharges and for use in forecasting transport of southern California discharges.
authors.affiliation: Coastal Observing R&D Center, Marine Physical Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA 92093-0214, USA. Electronic address: progowski@ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: Peter A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Rogowski
authors.affiliation: Coastal Observing R&D Center, Marine Physical Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA 92093-0214, USA.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Terrill
authors.affiliation: Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, Costa Mesa, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Kenneth
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schiff
authors.affiliation: Division of Ocean Systems Engineering, School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Systems Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Sung Yong
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D002140:California; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods; D005843:Geography; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D011825:Radar; D011891:Rain; D045483:Rivers; D014872:Water Movements; D060753:Water Quality
keywords: Areas of Special Biological Significance; Coastal discharge; Southern California; Stormwater plumes; Urban runoff; Water quality