Individual Based Modeling of Particles and Pelagic Organisms in Chesapeake Bay

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9628888 Hood This is a four year Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award which includes both a basic science and a course development component. The research will develop and apply a generalized Lagrangian particle trajectory model for the Chesapeake Bay which will then be used to develop an individual based, coupled biologic al and physical model of the sea nettle. This research will have two principle goals: The first is to provide a general particle trajectory model for the Chesapeake Bay research community that can be used as a tool for physical, chemical and biological research in the Bay. The second is to use the model to study how the interacti on between physical and biological processes determines the time and space distributions of and the impact the sea nettle has upon its prey in the Chesapeake Bay. The 3-dimensional, time-dependent flow will be provided by a hydrodynamic circulation model which was developed as part of the Chesapeake Bay Program. Gelatinous zoopla nkton data from the NSF LMER-TIES field observational program will be used for model formulation, initialization and groundtruthing. The project meets the NSF's CAREER program objectives because it w ill allow Dr. Hood to broaden his current ecosystem modeling research into the realm of individual based and Lagrangian particle trajectory modeling and develop a research program that focuses on the Chesapeake Bay. The latter will foster interaction with scient ists involved in the Chesapeake Bay Program and LMER-TIES. The project will also allow the principle investigator to develop a course in his general area of specialization. This course is needed because it will provide the basic training that biologists need to carry out coupled biological and physical modeling research and it is unique because the research will form the basis for instruction. It is hoped that this training will ultimately facilitate interaction between biological and physical scient ists and foster more interdisciplinary research on biological and physical interactions in marine systems.