Impacts of stormwater runoff in the Southern California Bight: Relationships among plume constituents

Motueka River plume facilitates transport of ruminant faecal contaminants into shellfish growing waters, Tasman Bay, New Zealand

“…Studies on the source and fate of faecal contaminants generally focus on smaller spatial scales and few have covered the full catchment footprint of land-derived faecal contamination on downstream marine systems. Our results corroborate studies that have illustrated the role of river plumes in sediment and contaminant transport (Forrest et al 2007;Korajkic et al 2009;Reifel et al 2009;Brodie et al 2010) and provide further support that rivers and the plumes that form during flood events are effective conduits for land-derived contaminants into coastal waters. Our findings support those of McKergow & Davies-Colley (2010), which demonstrated that the bulk of faecal loading in the Motueka River, and therefore into Tasman Bay, occurs during storm events.…”

“…Ahn et al 2005;Krometis et al 2007;Brodie et al 2010;McKergow & Davies-Colley 2010), indicating that contaminants can be washed from terrestrial environments or possibly released from sewerage overflows and transported by receiving waters. The sustainability of New Zealand's shellfish resources will likely be impacted by the nature and intensity of surrounding land use and the physical behaviour of coastal river plumes that transport contaminants into the marine environment (Warrick et al 2007;Reifel et al 2009). …”

Coupled physical, chemical, and microbiological measurements suggest a connection between internal waves and surf zone water quality in the Southern California Bight

“…The effects of land-based processes on coastal water quality, such as terrestrial runoff (Ahn et al, 2005;Reifel et al, 2009) and groundwater discharge (Valiela et al, 1990;Lee and Kim, 2007;de Sieyes et al, 2011) have been well documented. The present work aims to understand how oceanographic processes on the continental shelf affect surf zone water quality.…”

haracterizing the Effects of Two Storms on the Coastal Waters of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, Using Data from the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System

“…Stormwater runoff has long been recog- To date, some of the most comprehensive studies of stormwater plumes in the coastal ocean have focused on southern California (Jiang et al, 2001;Bay et al, 2003;Washburn et al, 2003;Nezlin et al, , 2007Warrick et al, 2007;Reifel et al, 2009;and Corcoran et al, 2010) The two storms we chose to study occurred during Hawai'i's rainy season, which typically lasts from October through April (Giambelluca and Sanderson, 1993) …”