Applications and case studies

Columbia River estuary and plume

[1]

SURA

SELFE is being used in an IOOS sponsored super-regional testbed for coastal inundation [2], led by Dr. Rick Luettich (UNC). The testbed focuses on two coastal regions that are prone to inundation hazard: Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of Maine.

Tsunami

SELFE has been certified by National Tsunami Hazard Program (NTHMP) as a tsunmai inundation model, after passing various benchmarks stipulated by NOAA [3]. It has been used to generate official inundation maps for the state of Oregon, spearheaded by OR Department of Geology ad Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) [4], under the auspice of NTHMP. Fig. 1 is a sample inundation map for Cannon Beach OR.

Fig. 1 Tsunami hazard map for Cannon Beach OR, generated from SELFE (c/o DOGAMI)

A nowcast-forecast system for for Portuguese coastal systems

Water quality [5]

Morphodynamics [6] Ecosystem [7]

Development and Application of Coupled Hydrodynamicand Water Quality Models in the Chesapeake Bay Region

The Chesapeake Bay and the Coastal Bays of the Maryland/Virginia Atlantic shore are highly valuable and productive ecosystems that are increasingly threatened by degraded water quality and loss of habitat due to both anthropogenic and natural disturbances.

In an effort to reverse this trend, federal and state governments have implemented a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program to control point source and non-point source pollution in each watershed.

In order to quantify these controls and better understand cause and effect relationships, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science is developing numerical hydrodynamic and water quality models and linking them together as a tool for predicting and measuring success of the TMDL effort.

Virginia Institute of Marine Science is involved in two TMDL projects in the Chesapeake Bay region:

1. TMDL scenario development and implementation for the Maryland and Virginia Coastal Bays system.
2. Impact on localized water quality resulting from allocation of nutrient loads to dredged material contaminant facilities in Baltimore Harbor.

Both projects involve coupling SELFE and ICM (Integrated Compartment Model).

Research Team

Virginia Institute of Marine Science: Junzheng Zhu and Harry Wang [8].

Fig. 2 SELFE-ICM for Maryland coast and bay