Long-term management strategies for USS Arizona, a submerged cultural resource in Pearl Harbor

Carkin, Brad; Carr, James; De Angelis, Robert; Field, Michael; Foecke, Timothy; Graham, Amanda; Johnson, Donald; Kayen, Robert; Lee, Homa; Lee, Kristen; Ma, Li; Makinson, John; McNamara, Christopher; Mitchell, Ralph; Presto, M; Storlazzi, Curt; Weins, William; Wilson, Brent

This report represents the final product in partial fulfillment of Department of Defense Legacy Resources Management Fund Projects Nos. 02-170, 03-170, 04-170, and 05-170, which were funded in Fiscal Years 2002–2005. Requested funding was provided in 2002, while only part of requested funding was provided in the other years. Because of incomplete funding, some tasks were reduced or eliminated. This report fulfills the Legacy Project report requirements. Legacy funding was augmented with funding from other sources, principal among these are the National Park Service (NPS) Systemwide Archeological Inventory Program, USS Arizona Memorial, Arizona Memorial Museum Association, the NPS Submerged Resources Center, and significant in-kind support from the federal agencies and academic institutions that have contributed to this report. Although this is the final report for the Legacy Project, it constitutes an interim synthesis report for the USS Arizona Preservation Project, which remains ongoing. The project’s primary focus was to acquire requisite data for understanding and characterizing the complex corrosion and deterioration processes affecting Arizona’s hull, both internally and externally, and to model and predict the nature and rate of structural changes resulting from corrosion. The interdisciplinary research approach to characterizing and understanding USS Arizona deterioration and integration into a predictive model reported here was designed to produce cumulative data whose synthesis will inform management actions regarding long-term stewardship of this National Historic Landmark site. Beyond informing management decisions about Arizona, we believe this research approach has produced results that contribute to each of the disciplines involved, and which are directly applicable to the thousands of steel legacy vessels submerged worldwide. This report represents what we have learned so far about USS Arizona and other submerged steel hull’s deterioration. Because Arizona research is not complete, and data derived from the monitoring program have not been generated and incorporated, report conclusions will be refined and may change as data-gaps are filled and new information is added. Data presented here represents the most informed view of the ship based on scientific observations, investigations and experimentation by outstanding experts in numerous fields, but it is necessarily incomplete because not all research domains have been completed. We have learned a great deal that will allow NPS and U.S. Navy managers to make correct decisions about immediate needs within a stewardship framework, although lack of complete funding has resulted in gaps in our knowledge about critical aspects of Arizona’s deterioration. In that regard, the work reported here is an important step toward refining questions that guide future research directed toward a full understanding of Arizona’s deterioration.

Long-term management strategies for USS Arizona, a submerged cultural resource in Pearl Harbor

Collections