STATE ESTIMATION OF ESTUARINE CIRCULATION AND WATER QUALITY BY NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND OBSERVATION

This paper describes a hindcast of post-rainstorm coliform bacteria distributions in Jamaica Bay made by use of a water-quality simulation model of that bay and models of the surrounding drainage basins on the basis of tide, wind, and rainfall data. That hindcast is then compared with coliform estimates obtained by field sampling. Although the investigators did not have access to the results of the field sampling until the hindcast was completed, the estimates obtained by simulation agree well with the estimates from field data. It is concluded that the models used here are capable of making predictions for engineering assessments.