Glacier Bay National Park oceanographic monitoring program: 2009 annual report
Sharman LC. 2011. Glacier Bay National Park oceanographic monitoring program: 2009 annual report. Natural Resource Technical Report. NPS/SEAN/NRTR—2011/508. National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science. Fort Collins, Colorado
The Southeast Alaska Inventory and Monitoring Network took over long-term oceanographic monitoring for Glacier Bay in 2009. It was the 17th consecutive year in that dataset, and this is the first annual report; subsequent updated reports will be generated annually. As operational conditions allowed, vertical profiles of temperature, salinity, light, turbidity, dissolved oxygen concentration, and an index of primary productivity were obtained for the water column once in early spring and once in mid-summer at 22 permanent stations throughout Glacier Bay; seven of those stations were occupied monthly from March through October. In general, parameters reflected typical ranges and spatial (both horizontal and vertical) and temporal trends expected for a high-latitude tidewater glacial fjord, with strong seasonal signals and strong length-of-fjord gradients along the glacier-to-baymouth transects. The water column was well-mixed in winter and strongly stratified in summer. Primary productivity indicators were quite high, indicating together with physical parameters that strong tidal mixing and/or wind-driven upwelling sustain phytoplankton productivity in surface waters from late spring through fall. Compared to historical data, a cold, salty, and dense water column anomaly below 10-m depth was observed during July at a central bay station. This anomaly matches a pattern seen in other northern Gulf of Alaska coastal waters during the 2006–2009 time period and is interpreted as a response to regional physical forcing originating with dynamics of the Aleutian Low pressure center. Data quality and quantity for 2010 and future years should be enhanced by improved equipment including a dedicated vessel, and operational improvements such as casts that sample closer to the bottom.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Sharman, Lewis
- Date of Issue
- 2011-11
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science
- Units
- GLBA , NRSS , SEAN
- Keywords
- Alaska, chlorophyll-a, CTD, fluorometer, Glacier Bay, Glacier Bay National Park, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, GLBA, Icy Strait, Monitoring, OBS, Oceans, PAR, photic depth, photosynthetically available radiation, physical oceanography, Pressure, Salinity, SEAN, sigma-t, Southeast Alaska Network, Temperature, Turbidity