SEBASTIAN RIVER SALINITY REGIME Report of a Study
Special Publication SJ94-SP1 SEBASTIAN RIVER SALINITY REGIME Report of a Study Part I. Review of Goals, Policies, and Objectives Part II: Segmentation Parts III and IV: Recommended Targets (Contract 92W-177) Submitted to the: St. Johns River Water Management District by the: Mote Marine Laboratory 1600 Thompson Parkway Sarasota, Florida 34236 Ernest D. Estevez, Ph.D. and Michael J. Marshall, Ph.D. Principal Investigators EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This is the third and final report of a project concerning desirable salinity conditions in the Sebastian River and adjacent Indian River Lagoon. A perception exists among resource managers that the present salinity regime of the Sebastian River system is undesirable. The St. Johns River Water Management District desires to learn the nature of an "environmentally desirable and acceptable salinity regime" for the Sebastian River and adjacent waters of the Indian River Lagoon. The District can then calculate discharges needed to produce the desired salinity regime, or conclude that optimal discharges are beyond its control. The values of studying salinity and making it a management priority in estuaries are four-fold. First, salinity has intrinsic significance as an important regulatory factor. Second, changes in the salinity regime of an estuary tend to be relatively easy to handle from a computational and practical point of view. Third, eliminating salinity as a problem clears the way for studies of, and corrective actions for, more insidious factors. Fourth, the strong covariance of salinity and other factors that tend to be management problems in estuaries makes salinity a useful tool in their analysis. Freshwater inflow and salinity are integral aspects of estuaries.
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