Documents

Project Summary and Statement of Work: May, 2007

Progress Report: Jul, 2007

Final Report: Jan, 2008

LMEs

Gulf of Alaska

Ecosystem components

Lower Trophic Level Productivity

Modeling

Places

Gulf of Alaska

Keywords

hydrography

Research Priorities

Coupling between shelf and inland waters in the ACC as well as the importance of freshwater runoff

734 An Updated Hydrology Model for the Gulf of Alaska

*Year funded:*	2007
*Start date:*	May 21, 2007
*End date:*	Feb 29, 2008
*Budget:*	$8,187.00

The freshwater discharge into the Gulf of Alaska from the coastal drainages is very poorly measured because there are very few stream or river flow gauges. A simple hydrology model was developed by Royer and published in 1982 that uses precipitation measurements and drainage areas to determine the rate of freshwater discharge entering the coastal Gulf of Alaska. It allows for storage and ablation of the mountain glaciers in this region but does not allow any net changes in those glaciers from the beginning of the record in 1930 to 1982. Recent volume measurements of those glaciers now allow net ablation or accumulation of ice and snow. These types of changes and the addition of major river runoff and freshwater discharge along the British Columbia coast can now be added to the model.

We are rewriting the model from Quickbasic into Matlab, a more commonly used computer coding today. We will update the input data through 2006 and include the new sources of freshwater discharge along the Southeast, Southcoast Alaska and British Columbia coasts. We expect that the new discharge estimates will be at least twice the average rate of freshwater discharge of the Mississippi River. Climate changes will probably also increase this rate.

Principal Investigator(s)

Thomas Royer
OldDominion University