Coastal Services Center

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Ecological Assessment of Storm Impacts

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Assessing Storm Impacts

As part of the Coastal Storms Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will assess how nonpoint source contaminants move into nearshore ecosystems during storms and how these pollutants affect natural resources. In addition, NOAA will conduct new ecotoxicological research and compile a database of existing information on sediment and water quality to help natural resource managers assess the potential impacts of storm water runoff on at-risk aquatic species.

Chemical fate and transport modeling will be used to characterize the storm water-driven environmental movement of selected contaminants to nearshore habitats. Exposure profiles will be combined with response information from an ecotoxicological database to estimate the potential for adverse health outcomes in fish and invertebrate communities.

NOAA will also conduct new scientific investigations to address key data gaps with respect to contaminants commonly associated with runoff from roads, highways, parking lots, and other impervious surfaces in highly urbanized watersheds. This experimental research will focus on ecologically and commercially important fish species that are trust resources for NOAA and other local, state, and federal agencies.

Finally, in partnership with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, NOAA will compile a comprehensive standardized database of available sediment chemistry, tissue chemistry, and sediment toxicity from the Southern California region. The data will be incorporated into NOAA’s Query Manager’s database application and into a Southern California Watershed Database and Mapping Project. These products will be made available to the public via the Web. Staff members will also work with state partners to evaluate and develop sediment quality objectives for California and distribute ecologically relevant geospatial data sets.

Various environmental datasets have been compiled for each of the Coastal Storm pilot areas. Query Manager and MARPLOT applications can be freely downloaded to access sediment chemistry, sediment toxicity, and tissue chemistry data for Southern California , as well as information on Florida and the Pacific Northwest . Query Manager allows users to select from a menu of pre-programmed queries that sort and analyze the data to produce summary output tables. The query output then can be immediately displayed in the integrated mapping program, MARPLOT, or it can be exported to a variety of formats for use with other mapping software (e.g., ArcView) or applications (e.g., spreadsheets, statistical software packages, and word processors). Query Manager and MARPLOT are tools designed to assist coastal resource managers by providing a rapid, convenient way to create watershed-based maps that display analyzed, sorted, and summarized data. These applications and datasets are available at: http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/watersheddownloads

How the Project Will Work

The public and the scientific community will benefit by having electronic access to new and existing data on sediment and water pollution. This will be important in terms of understanding the health of coastal ecosystems in Southern California (from the Bight to the Mexico border). This information will also help local planners identify the sources, transports, and fates of specific chemical pollutants in estuarine and marine environments. This should improve the effectiveness of regional activities designed to mitigate or otherwise reduce the ecological impacts of nonpoint source pollution.

For Additional Information

Nat Scholz (nonpoint pollution)
NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service
Northwest Fisheries Science Center
Telephone: (206) 860-3454
E-mail:Nathaniel.Scholz@noaa.gov