COASTAL OCEAN WATER RESOURCES: LINKS WITH TERRESTRIAL FRESHWATER
RESOURCES, ANTHROPOGENIC INFLUENCES AND CLIMATE CHANGE.
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Terry
A. Nelsen
Collaborating scientist(s):
Lt(jg) Jon Klay
Objective:
To provide an understanding on how anthropogenic activities
on the world's continents can impact coastal-ocean water quality,
fisheries landings and coastal recreational resources and the role
climate change potentially can play in all of the above.
Rationale:
Global and regional increases in population have placed
growing stresses upon the earth's natural resources, including water.
Water resources traditionally include terrestrial-associated rivers,
lakes and subterranean aquifers. In a less traditional thought
significant manner the coastal ocean also serves mankind as a water
resource for both recreation and commercial fisheries.
Method:
Results from both ongoing investigations and global data bases
on fisheries harvests, coastal-ocean pollution and increasing continental
usage of such anthropogenically important commodities as commercial
fertilizer (figure) along with increases in
river nutrient fluxes were unified and compared for a global overview.
Accomplishment:
It was shown that, to date, widespread failure to
connect upstream with coastal pollution results from watersheds typically
being fragmented into several political jurisdictions. This is
compounded by scientific study with a propensity toward mono- as opposed
to multi-disciplinary investigations, the latter tending to promote a
broader, more system-oriented approach. Scientifically, we need to
understand and approach environmental studies on the regional and
system-level and consider, in a unified manner, the effects from the
watershed to the coastal ocean. Moreover, changing patterns of rainfall
may alter inter-basin precipitation and change freshwater and
nutrient/pollutant inflow to segments of the coastal zone with attendant shifts
in coastal primary production and fisheries habitat.
THIS PROJECT WAS RECENTLY COMPLETED
Key reference:
Nelsen, T., (1996), Coastal Ocean Water Resources: Linkages with Terrestrial
Freshwater Resources, Anthropogenic Influences and Climatic Change,
NATO ASI Series,
Diachronic Climatic Impacts on Water Resources, (Eds. A. Angelakis and A. Issar),
Chapter 14, pp. 319-347, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg.
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