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Debris Accumulation Scenarios in Washington State from the March 2011 Tōhoku Tsunami

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Debris Accumulation Scenarios in Washington State from the March 2011 Tōhoku Tsunami Debris Accumulation Scenarios in Washington State from the March 2011 Tōhoku Tsunami Ian Miller Jim Brennan Washington Sea Grant i Debris Accumulation Scenarios in Washington State from the March 2011 Tōhoku Tsunami Ian Miller Coastal Hazards Specialist Washington Sea Grant 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd. Port Angeles, WA 98362 [email protected] 360.417.6460 Jim Brennan Marine Habitat Specialist Washington Sea Grant University of Washington 3716 Brooklyn Ave. N.E. Seattle, WA 98105 [email protected] 206.543.6600 WSG-TR 12-02 wsg.washington.edu/ Cover photo of debris in the coastal waters off Japan, taken shortly after the 2011 Tohoku tsunami. Image Credit: U.S. Navy ii Abstract Background he Japanese government estimates that approximately 5 erceived as a problem in Washington state for decades, Tmillion tons of debris washed out to sea after the Tōhoku Ppotential impacts of marine debris include wildlife interac- tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011. Of that mass, tions, habitat degradation, a reduction in the aesthetic quality about 1.5 million tons probably floated away from the near- of the shoreline and risks to human and environmental health coastal environment and could be transported to the beaches (Environmental Protection Agency, 2011). While a number of fringing the northeast Pacific Ocean, including the coast of individuals and organizations have worked to remove debris Washington state. The debris has been difficult to track and from Washington’s beaches for some time (Washington Coast represents a potential human and environmental hazard that Savers, 2012), the possibility of an increased flow of debris due results in concern about the type and volume of tsunami-gen- to the March 2011 Tōhoku tsunami has galvanized the public erated materials that may wash ashore over the next few years. and media and generated interest among federal and state agen- This analysis uses evidence from oceanographic studies and cies (e.g., National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration models to identify likely pathways and sinks for debris and (NOAA); Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Washington estimate the fraction that might land in Washington. Results departments of Natural Resources, Ecology, Fish and Wildlife, suggest that at least 75 percent of the floating debris will not Health and Emergency Management; tribal governments; local make landfall and will end up in the Pacific Sub-Tropical governments; and nongovernmental organizations). Convergence Zone. The remaining debris may make landfall, and observations suggest that most is likely to land along the The tsunami was devastating to communities in Japan and coast of Alaska over multiple years as debris is entrained in and swept to sea an estimated 5 million tons of debris, of which redistributed from the Sub-Arctic Gyre. In Washington, this approximately 1.5 million tons is estimated to be floating debris analysis suggests that most of the debris that makes landfall that could potentially recruit to beaches on the West Coast of will do so relatively rapidly (within 3-4 years). It is unlikely, North America (NOAA Marine Debris Program, 2012). Indeed, however, that all of the debris will come ashore in any one year. tsunami debris has already been confirmed from beaches We estimate that no more than 138,000 tons is likely to land fringing the northeast Pacific Ocean (Mullen, 2012). There is along the coast of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia growing concern that significant quantities of debris, above in any single year, with 11,000 tons as a more probable amount. and beyond “normal” background levels, could represent a true If distributed evenly along the full length of tidal shoreline, this human or ecological hazard. Marine debris generally is very mass of debris would amount to between 0.5 and 6.7 tons/mile difficult to track in the open ocean (Mace, 2012), and the effort of beach, or about 1-13 times the current estimated “baseline” to track the debris from the Tōhoku tsunami has been similarly debris delivery to the outer coast of Washington state. Addition- challenging (NOAA Marine Debris Program, 2012). ally, we estimate that this elevated level of debris accumulation will occur for a relatively short amount of time (1-2 years). Indi- Continued difficulties in tracking Tōhoku tsunami debris vidual beaches may receive significantly more or less accumu- warrant the use of other approaches for predicting its impact. lation due to local oceanographic effects. While it is likely that There are numerous specific management questions associated tsunami debris will continue to make landfall for years to come, with this debris: Will there be toxic material? When and where the levels of accumulation in Washington will probably not will large items like ships or whole buildings make landfall? appreciably exceed the existing debris baseline beyond 2015. Will the debris carry invasive species? However, the fundamen- tal question considered in this report is, “Where, and in what quantities, will debris make landfall?” This question is import- ant for those tasked with managing this debris as a solid-waste problem, for natural resources damage assessment, and for developing removal strategies. The objectives of this analysis are to: 1. Review available published literature on patterns and processes driving the distribution of debris in the north Pacific; and 2. Integrate the collected information to formulate a range of scenarios regarding the potential mass of beached tsunami debris expected on the coast of Washington. 1 A Note Regarding Uncertainty Table 1. Length of the “General Sea Coast” (ignoring islands, embayments and complex coastal features) and the full “tidal shoreline” of the U.S. his analysis attempts to quantify ranges of the mass of mainland West Coast, Alaska, British Columbia and the Baja Peninsula. Tdebris associated with the Tōhoku tsunami expected to “NOAA NOS” refers to NOAA’s National Ocean Service. reach the shores of Washington state. The goal is to support Location General Sea Tidal Shoreline Source efforts to plan for elevated volumes of debris and address Coast (mi) (mi) questions such as: Will the tsunami debris overtax the existing Oregon 296 1410 NOAA NOS network of largely community-based clean-up efforts? Will Washington 157 3026 NOAA NOS additional support be required to support disposal? Will a larger Alaska 5580 31,383 NOAA NOS clean-up effort, perhaps including on-the-ground responders, California 840 3427 NOAA NOS be required? This is fundamentally a quantitative analysis, and British Columbia 600 15,985 CA Dept of Energy, the final conclusions are based on the underlying assumption Mines and Resources, Survey and Mapping that the volumes used as input are reasonable estimates. Unfor- Branch tunately, there is significant uncertainty in this assumption. For Baja Peninsula 1071 Not Available Google Earth example, throughout the paper we use the figure of 1.5 million (Pacific Side) tons of floating debris generated by the tsunami, but this is only Total 8,544 >55,231 an estimate. The actual mass of debris floating in the Pacific Ocean from the Tōhoku tsunami could be quite a bit less, or more, than this rough estimate made by Japanese officials after The worst-case scenario is, of course, highly improbable, since the event. Similarly, a baseline estimate of the current debris it is reasonable to expect that the amount of debris making load to Washington’s Pacific coast beaches is used to provide landfall will vary in both time and space. Indeed, there is a context for the quantitative estimates of tsunami debris making clear suggestion from past investigations that landfall of debris landfall. This figure (0.5 tons/mile) was estimated using data may stretch into years or even decades (Ebbesmeyer et al., collected by volunteers during the Olympic Coast Clean-up 2007), that some may distribute outside of the north Pacific (Washington Coast Savers, 2012) but includes uncertainty (Ebbesmeyer, 2004), and that much of it may never make land- derived from the estimations of debris weight and the length of fall at all (Ingraham et al., 2001; Pichel et al., 2007; Lebreton et beach cleaned during those clean-ups. Additional information al., 2012; Maximenko et al., 2012). It is therefore likely that the from the Grassroots Garbage Gang, which routinely cleans actual mass of debris making landfall, per year and per mile, 22-28 miles of beach on Long Beach Peninsula on the southwest will be quite a bit less than is implied by the worst-case scenario Washington coast, suggests that the beaches there accumulate described above. on the order of 0.25-0.60 tons/mile during the winter (www. ourbeach.org). These estimates provide a point of comparison First Revision: The 2 Percent Axiom and allow the reader to visualize the possible debris scenarios he worst-case scenario described above can be improved in the context of the “normal” debris load. At the same time it is Tupon by turning to a hypothesis proposed by debris-tracker essential to recognize that they are uncertain. and oceanographer Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer for estimating the recovery of “tracers”: As the distance from the tracer release Patterns of Beached Debris point to the area of landfall increases, the percentage of tracers that are actually recovered on the beach will decrease. For The Worst-Case Scenario distances greater than 1000 miles, Dr. Ebbesmeyer suggests a t is instructive to put the estimate of the mass of floating general estimate of about 2 percent of the initial number of trac- Idebris from the Tōhoku tsunami into context. A million- ers is likely to be recovered (Ebbesmeyer et al., 1994; Hiedorn, and-a-half tons is a significant quantity. As a first step toward 2010). This rough estimate will be referred to below as the 2 deriving scenarios for planning, we can imagine a worst-case percent axiom.
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