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Get the SCOOP on LSU’s Role in the SURA Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction Program Imagine planning a day trip to New Orleans with a few of your friends. Now imagine the need to rent a boat and SCUBA gear to get there. This scene could become a reality if Louisiana’s coastline continues to recede because of coastal erosion. In fact, an average of one acre of coastal land becomes sea every 35 minutes.
Oceanographic and coastal research is vitally important to Louisiana, as well as the nation, because the Southeastern United States supports 80 million inhabitants, and the coast is home to numerous naval bases, major ports, commercial shipping and fishing enterprises, oil and gas reserves, and flourishing tourist industries. However, the safety of the citizens and sustainability of the area’s resources and economies are in jeopardy due to human-induced, environmental and ecological changes. Storm surges and flooding caused by hurricanes and tropical storms, harmful algal blooms, oil spills, sewage, and sediment and agricultural nutrient runoff all pose constant threats to the coastal region. In an effort to combat these threats, SURA has initiated leadership and funding for SCOOP. Measurements of wave height and direction, wind speed and direction, currents, water density, water quality, and biological indices are examples of the data being collected from floating buoys and fixed platforms in the coastal regions and relayed through satellites to computers on shore. The data is then measured and archived by the Wave-Current-Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana, or WAVCIS — a program in the School of the Coast and Environment’s Coastal Studies Institute at LSU.
“This information can be applied to the myriad of coastal problems currently facing the state, enhance restoration efforts, and serve as a prior warning system during major storms and offshore accidents,” said Stone. Xiongping Zhang, a researcher in the institute, is assisting with the WAVCIS program and making new and highly unique advances in Geographic Information Systems — a very powerful tool in ocean observing.
SCOOP is providing the necessary momentum to drive collaboration between different coastal research institutes by encouraging a standards-based approach to share and interpret information, resources, and research results. SCOOP is also facilitating collaborative research between Grid Computing experts and coastal researchers. “Such interdisciplinary research will result in the deployment of a cyber infrastructure that can enable real-time observations and predictions based on a multitude of computational models,” said Chirag Dekate, a Ph.D. student and member of the CCT and WAVCIS team working on the project. LSU researchers demonstrated preliminary versions of the cyber infrastructure at Supercomputing 2004, an international conference for high-performance computing experts. Real-time measurements from WAVCIS sensors off the Louisiana coast were incorporated into a computational model running on supercomputers in Germany. Complex workflow scenarios involving coupled modeling - where output from one computational model provides input for another model - were also demonstrated. Plans are currently in progress to develop a more comprehensive infrastructure that would provide instantaneous access to large data sets and computational resources.
Due to efforts like SCOOP, progress has been made in slowing the effects of coastal erosion. Perhaps, Louisianans won’t have to invest in SCUBA gear after all. Contact Gina Palermo or Jennifer Hughes | CCT
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University Relations Related Links SURA (Southeastern Universities Research Association)
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James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor Gregory Stone, who also serves as director of CSI and professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at LSU, said that Louisiana will profit immensely from sustained ocean observing systems such as WAVCIS because of the high quality data sets that are available in real time. 
Name: Gina 
