Bight discharge data set significantly expanded to support acidification modeling effort

A team of researchers that developed a computer model to predict how the Southern California Bight will be affected by ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH) has significantly expanded and updated the amount of data available for evaluating the role that land-based discharges play in driving OAH conditions.

The data compilation effort, completed in October, provides modelers with the levels of nutrients and other constituents that were discharged from rivers and wastewater outfalls to the coastal ocean for the years 1997-2017. An initial modeling run that was completed last year relied on four years of data, 1997-2000.

The next modeling run, which will focus on the more recent time period of 2013-2017, is expected to be completed by summer 2021.

SCCWRP member agencies played a key role in collecting the spatially and temporally explicit data, which include surface point source, nonpoint source and natural runoff for 75 rivers and 23 wastewater plants that discharge effluent via ocean outfalls. Researchers even obtained discharge data for the Tijuana River watershed and Rosarito Beach in Mexico.