Scientists deploy new wave buoy

Researchers take deeper look at Santa Cruz waves

SANTA CRUZ >> Scientists with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography will soon have a deeper insight into how Santa Cruz waves impact local flood events, thanks to a coastal buoy installed on Sunday. The wave buoy will track wave height, direction, speed, as well as water and air temperature.

“Most people try to predict what wave conditions are going to be like a few days in advance,” said James Behrens, the Scripps’ Coastal Data Information Program manager. “These coastal buoys allow you to understand how that weather service forecast really impacts the coastline where you are.”

Inside the buoy, high precision sensors which Behrens said run around $80,000, measure wave speed, and a compass tracks which direction waves are traveling. The

device, which weighs approximately 500 pounds, is anchored to the seafloor about 1 mile south from the intersection of Columbia Street and West Cliff Drive.

It joins nearly 100 other Scripps operated buoys spread out in coastal waters throughout the U. S., from New England to Puerto Rico. In California alone Scripps maintains a network of 25 buoys.

But, this is the first buoy of its kind to be deployed in Santa Cruz.

It will be maintained by local research vessel operator, Jim Christmann, who

is the captain of the Shana Rae. The project, Behrens said, is funded by California State Parks Natural Resource Division, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Every 30 minutes, the buoy emit s mea sure - ments v ia satellite to Scripps’ programmers. After the data is analyzed, the Santa Cruz buoy measurements are posted online at https://cdip.ucsd. edu/m/ products/?stn=254p1.

The buoy data will help Behrens and his team investigate how waves breaking close to shore contribute to coastal flooding events in Santa Cruz. Those nearshore waves are not well researched, compared to their big-wave counterparts, Behrens said.

“Waves sort of change direction as they encounter shallower areas offshore and there is a focusing of the waves that can occur as they bend around coastline,” Behrens said.

Those dynamic conditions have made near-shore waves more challenging to study. As a result, the way in which these waves impact floods is still an emerging area of research, Behrens said. It will take a few seasons of data to investigate how this interaction plays out on the Santa Cruz coastline.

Next, the researchers are going to complete laser scans of the Santa Cruz coastline. From that, Behrens and his colleagues can create precise maps, that will help them predict how waves of different heights could run up to homes, roads and other infrastructure.

To document how sea level rise is impacting coastal communities, Behrens said, this research is crucial.

“Coastal areas are going to get more and more exposed to high water events with time,” Behrens said. “As sea level rises, this problem is going to expand to more and more areas on the West Coast, and understanding what forces waves up the coastline, what factors cause coastlines to respond in different ways, will help people make informed decisions about how we’re going to live on the coast in the future,” Behrens said.