This investigation addresses phenomena in the Coastal Ocean that present a directed structure of causation and inference. It will focus on the interface between biological and physical phenomena, where the causal structure is one-way, physics affecting biology via advection, temperature, salt, light, and turbulence. The transfer of physical uncertainty toward biological phenomena is of primary concern. Rigorous representations of that transfer, and its implications for state and parameter estimation, will be developed. Examples will be drawn from contemporary experience with observational programs and simulations. Due to their huge complexity, these site-specific, coupled problems favor careful problem formulation which is compatible with concurrent oceanographic measurement programs. Both Eulerian and Lagrangian (Individual-Based) models will be used, operating in spatially-explicit environments. Essential nonlinearities will be accommodated with ensemble (Monte Carlo) methods in algorithm design; and with maximum likelihood estimation where simpler least-squares approaches are not justified.
General problems of Environmental and Natural Resource Management are now being appreciated globally, and particularly in the coastal ocean. Access to transportation, oil and gas, marine fisheries, recreation, and waste disposal are increasingly dominant there; and the USA has created numerous public management requirements for those resources and activities. This work addresses contemporary US coastal ocean problems that are multi-disciplinary in nature. The proposed collaboration unites expertise in Probability and Statistics, Ocean Science, and Computational Science. The problems selected are at the forefront of the interfaces among these disciplines. As presented in the ocean, these problems are big and complex. Progress at their interface is needed in which workable computational algorithms, sound mathematical formulations, and useful scientific reduction collaborate in intellectually lasting ways. The PI's have standing in their disciplines and at their interfaces. Progress of relevance to major ongoing coastal management programs will be balanced across the collaborating disciplines and focused on the interdisciplinary Coastal Ocean.
