Puget Sound Oceanography2009

Course overview

Geology of Puget Sound

Started from Pangaea

Plate movement, subduction zones, volcanoes and valleys

Glaciation – scouring and carving

Sea level rise

Rivers and sediments

Morphology of Puget Sound

Basins and sills

Rivers- seasonal cycle- east/west differences- differences among basins

Circulation fundamentals

Exchange circulation- freshwater meets ocean water

Tides- mixing- tidal excursion- tidal prism

Juan de Fuca

South Sound

Whidbey BasinHood

Canal

Main Basin

Stratification and Residence Time

Freshwater input

Tidal mixing

Deep versus shallow basins

Knudsen Relation – “The most important equation of estuarine circulation”

QR Q1, S1 = S2 - dS

Q2, S2

Volume conservation: Q1 = Q2 + QR Salt conservation: 0 = S2Q2 – S1Q1

Combining these two it is easy to show that:

Q2 = (S1/ds)QR and Q1 = (S2/ds)QR

The Knudsen Relation

Primary Productionchlorophyll

dep

thHorizontal advection

Mixing

Vertical advection and sinking

(growth – respiration – grazing)

temperature

0

5

10

15

20

25

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Month

Ch

l a (

ug

L-1

)

Three Tree Point, Main Basin

Gedney Island, Whidbey Basin

N.Admiralty Inlet

Sisters Point, Hood Canal

Oakland Bay, South Sound

Hood Canal Main Basin

Whidbey Basin

Strait of Juan de Fuca

Dabob Bay

Sills

Categorization of PS basins:

(Winter et al, 1975)

Controls on phytoplankton blooms- light- nutrients- temperature- circulation

Temporal and spatial patterns of biomass in Puget Sound

- light- stratification

Zooplankton

Phytoplankton

J F M A M J J A S O N D

Zooplankton

(Roman et al, 2005)

Behavior/ vertical distributions

Temporal patterns- Link to phytoplankton blooms

Spatial distributions- Circulation- Topography- River input

Hypoxia

Ocean end

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

0 5 10 15 20

Physical/biological/chemical mechanisms

Human versus natural nutrient inputs

Biological consequences

Processes in Hood Canal

(Newton, Hood Canal Dissolved Oxygen Program web site)Parker-Stetter and Horne, 2008

HABs and Invasive Species

Ecosystems and human health consequences

Physical controls

Human inputs

Threats to Puget Sound

Climate variability

Local versus large-scale forcing

Coherence throughout Puget Sound

Implications to ecosystems?

Evaluations

Fill out 2 sets of bubble sheets, one for Julie and one for Parker(put our names at top of form)

Fill out 1 set of comments (yellow sheets)

Drop in campus mail