The Northern Gulf of Mexico Littoral Initiative

The Northern Gulf of Mexico Littoral Initiative (NGLI) is a multi-agency program established through a partnership between the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (COMNAVMETOCCOM) and the Environmental Protection Agency's Gulf of Mexico Program Office. The goal of NGLI is to become a sustained comprehensive nowcasting/forecasting system for the coastal areas of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama that will use model forecasts and observational data for military training and coastal resource management. The program integrates a reliable and timely meteorological and oceanographic modeling scheme, combining three-dimensional circulation, sediment transport, and atmosphere and wave models with in situ and remotely sensed observations via an extensive data distribution network that is available to a wide range of users in near-real time through an interactive website. The Naval Oceanographic Office, who manages the program for COMNAVMETOCCOM, has chosen the Mississippi Bight as an ideal test bed to economically examine new modeling and observational technologies before they are applied to littoral areas of military interest. NGLI directly addresses the Navy's requirement to project oceanographic information from deepwater environments shoreward into hostile littoral areas. Model nowcasts and forecasts are being applied to the ocean littoral environment by cascading information from large ocean basin models to shallow-water models. NGLI plans to support military training exercises performed by Special Boat Unit 22, stationed at Stennis Space Center, MS. Lessons learned within this "natural laboratory" also provide civil authorities with the means to consider the environmental stresses (sediment transport modifications, increased pollution, etc.) caused by growth in hotel and casino developments, population, and industry. The NGLI modeling system will aid in ensuring the quality of shellfish harvests, one of the area's largest industries. NGLI utilizes a variety of oceanographic technologies for in situ observations. Measurements consist of both moored upward-looking and buoy downward-looking acoustic Doppler current profiler observations telemetered in near-real time; buoy meteorological observations; surface drifters; and survey-collected profiles of temperature, salinity, oxygen, current velocity, optical parameters, and sediment data. Remotely sensed observations include surface currents from Coastal Ocean Dynamics Applications Radar, Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor, Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer imagery, satellite altimetry, gravimetric geoid studies, and Global Positioning System technology to determine sea surface height. Information generated from observational data and model output is deposited into a large data distribution system, consisting of data archives, data exchange and networking systems, and web site maintenance. This infrastructure provides NGLI data access not only to the U.S. Navy, but also to the area's resource managers, conservationists, educational institutions, and the entire Gulf Coast community.