Meso-American Region (MAR)

Caption: Zoom in the ROMS grid showing a cyclonic eddy in the Gulf of Honduras. Vectors show the current direction. Color shows the passive tracer concentration release from 400 watersheds. Color scale is logarithmic.

Caption: SeaWiFS Colored Dissolved Matter image of the MAR obtained from new spectral optimization algorithm developed at University of Miami by C. Kuchinke (Cherubin et al., 2008).

Description:

The model domain is the wider Gulf of Honduras, which encompasses the eastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula and the northern coast of Honduras (15.5-21.3N, 89.1-84.3W). It includes the barrier reef, reef lagoon, and adjacent oceanic waters and uses a 1 km resolution bathymetry from the World Resources Institute (http://www.wri.org/). It is used here as a nature run.

Resolution:

The horizontal resolution of the simulation is 2 km and the model has 25 vertical layers.

Nested:

No. A new simulation was started nested off-line (not run at the same time) in the Atlantic HYCOM

Initial conditions:

World Ocean Atlas 2001 climatology

Outer conditions:

Model variables of the ocean state (temperature, salinity) at the open ocean boundaries were relaxed to the monthly Levitus ocean climatology (Word Ocean Atlas).

Tides:

Tides were set at the boundaries by the TPXO6 global tide model.

Forcing:

Monthly varying surface fluxes (wind, rain, solar, radiative heat fluxes, evaporation) were obtained from the Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Dataset (COADS) climatology.

Applications:

This simulation was used to understand the evolution in time and space of terrestrial runoff in waters of the Mesoamerican region using remote sensing techniques combined with river discharge model (Cherubin et al., 2008).

This simulation was also used to provide some general information on the connectivity between rivers and reef (Paris and Cherubin, 2008) and the fate of fish larvae from spawning aggregation sites.

This work was funded by the World Resources Institute (WRI), thanks to Lauretta Burke and by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) thanks to Nestor Vindevoxhel and Alejandro Arrivillaga. This study was also supported by the World Bank/GEF Coral Reef Targeted Research Program (http://www.gefcoral.org/).

Contacts:

Laurent Cherubin - lcherubin@rsmas.miami.edu

Claire Paris - cparis@rsmas.miami.edu

Christopher Kuchinke - kuchinke@physics.miami.edu