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E-Estuary: Developing a Decision-support System for Coastal Management in the Conterminous United States
Citation:
DETENBECK, N. E., M. C. PELLETIER, M. ABDELRHMAN, S. A. REGO, AND M. TENBRINK. E-Estuary: Developing a Decision-support System for Coastal Management in the Conterminous United States. In Proceedings, 33rd IAHR 2009 Congress: Water Engineering for a Sustainable Environment, Vancourver, BC, CANADA, August 09 - 14, 2009. International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR), Madrid, Spain, 5284-5292, (2009).
Impact/Purpose:
The 33rd IAHR 2009 Congress, "Water Engineering for a Sustainable Environment" includes a series of special sessions under the theme "Advances in Hydroinformatics for Integrated Watershed and Coast Management". Dr. Detenbeck will be presenting an overview of e-Estuary, a decision-support system being developed for estuaries and associated watersheds of the conterminous United States. This paper is also being published as part of the meeting proceedings. Attendance at this international conference will allow exchange of information on the current state-of-the-art in using coastal data models, developing web-sites for decision-support, and linking monitoring data with modelling applications. The subject of Dr. Detenbeck's presentation is directly linked to an FY12 APM (System to provide regional maps, databases and analytical tools to facilitate cost-benefit analysis of watershed management actions on effects in receiving waters) under APG 2.1.1 (By 2012, provide state and local WQ managers with protocols for evaluating the restoration potential of watersheds) within Long-Term Goal 2 of the Water Quality Multi-Year Plan.
Description:
Ready access to geographic information is needed to support management decisions for estuaries at local, state, regional, and national scales. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) is developing e-Estuary, a decision-support system for coastal management. E-Estuary has three elements: an estuarine geo-referenced relational database, associated watershed GIS data, and tools to support decision-making. A population of 300 estuaries with associated watersheds at the size of 10-digit Hydrologic Units (16-100 ha) or larger within the conterminous U.S. has been identified for characterization of estuarine geomorphology, tidal and hydrologic regime, and land-use/land-cover of associated watersheds. Historic estuarine water-quality data from Federal government, State agencies and local estuarine management groups have been integrated into a geodatabase structure. The structure is consistent with the WQ-X schema established by US EPA for XML-based data transfer between reporting units and national databases. An ArcHydro-based geodatabase structure is being created to facilitate merger of national hydrographic databases (NHD-Plus) with emerging coastal data models (e.g., Analytical Framework for Coastal/Estuarine Systems), to provide linkages with web services for delivery of time series data, and to provide linkages between monitoring data and modeling applications. Tools and associated datasets under development include: 1) nationwide classification schemes to reduce variance in nutrient-response relationships, 2) regional regression relationships to normalize total organic carbon in sediments to sediment grain-size in order to support diagnosis of eutrophication, 3) estuary-scale segmentation and parameterization of simple tidal prism models to refine loading targets, and 4) habitat zonation schemes to help refine aquatic life designated uses.