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Wednesday, September 29, 2021. 4:00 PM. Webinar: Improved Understanding of Sediment Dynamics for the Coos Estuary. David Sutherland, University of Oregon; Emily Eidam, University of North Carolina; Jenni Schmitt, South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. Sponsored by NOAA National Estuarine Reserve Research System Science Collaborative. Register here.

Designated one of Oregon’s three “deep draft development” estuaries, the Coos estuary has many diverse users who share a need for better information about water and sediment flows through the estuary under current and future conditions. Working closely with the South Slough NERR and the Partnership for Coastal Watersheds, a local stakeholder group, researchers from the University of Oregon and the University of North Carolina helped to address some of these informational needs. The team collected new data, including the first bathymetric dataset to cover the entire Coos estuary, and developed a hydrodynamic model to better understand and predict estuarine water and sediment flows. They then worked with end users to develop data and modeling products of interest, including two perturbation experiments analyzing a proposed deepening and widening of the estuary’s main navigation channel.

In this webinar, members of the project team will discuss the end-user engagement approach used in their collaborative research project, present highlights from the model experiments, and share observations from an examination of historic estuary conditions prior to human impacts.