Largier John

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Largier
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John
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  • Article
    Observing larval transport processes affecting population connectivity : progress and challenges
    (Oceanography Society, 2007-09) Gawarkiewicz, Glen G. ; Monismith, Stephen G. ; Largier, John
    Population connectivity is inherently bio-physical: it is determined by physical transport and dispersion, as well as biological processes such as timing of spawning, larval behavior, and mortality. Knowledge of connectivity is essential for understanding ecosystem responses to changing environmental conditions. It establishes the spatial scales over which a population is connected, and in turn the primary spatial scale of population interactions and ecosystem dynamics. Concepts in population connectivity were initially developed in terrestrial ecology, where dispersal may occur at different life stages. In the simplest form, a one-dimensional dispersal curve describes the distribution of settlers away from a source region as a function of distance. As this spatial distribution varies in time, the “dispersal kernel” defines a spatial probability density function of settlers aggregated over time (see, e.g., Okubo and Levin, 2002). This dispersal kernel may be three dimensional, but is often reduced to two dimensions (e.g., animals on a plain) or one dimension (e.g., animals living along the land-water interface).
  • Article
    The influence of wind forcing on the Chesapeake Bay buoyant coastal current
    (American Meteorological Society, 2006-07) Lentz, Steven J. ; Largier, John
    Observations of the buoyant coastal current that flows southward from Chesapeake Bay are used to describe how the thickness, width, and propagation speed vary in response to changes in the along-shelf wind stress. Three basic regimes were observed depending on the strength of the wind. For weak wind stresses (from −0.02 to 0.02 Pa), the buoyant coastal current was relatively thin, the front slope was not steep, and the width was variable (1–20 km). For moderate downwelling (southward) wind stresses (0.02–0.07 Pa), wind-driven cross-shelf advection steepened the front, causing the plume to narrow and thicken. For stronger downwelling wind stresses (greater than 0.07 Pa), vertical mixing dominated, bulk Richardson numbers were approximately 0.25, isopycnals were nearly vertical, and the plume front widened but the plume width did not change. Plume thickness and width were normalized by the theoretical plume scales in the absence of wind forcing. Normalized plume thickness increased linearly from 1 to 2 as downwelling wind stresses increased from 0 to 0.2 Pa. Normalized plume widths were approximately 1 for downwelling wind stresses from 0.02 to 0.2 Pa. The observed along-shelf propagation speed of the plume was roughly equal to the sum of the theoretical propagation speed and the wind-driven along-shelf flow.