Using seasonality and particle tracking to trace Intermediate Water in the Strait of Georgia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Strait of Georgia is a complex system of basins and waterways within the Salish Sea that receives the majority of Greater Vancouver’s wastewater via riverine input and effluent outfalls. It can be nominally divided into three constituent water masses: (1) a riverine surface layer; (2) a deep oceanic layer; and (3) an intermediate layer, composed of a mixture of the surface and deep waters. The intermediate water (IW) layer is the largest layer volumetrically and a primary component of the region’s subsurface estuarine circulation, yet a comprehensive understanding of the system has proved challenging. Here, we use two methods to assess the circulation pathways. The first method uses a synthesis of hydrographic observations to determine seasonal cycles in IW mass characteristics and exploits the spatial variation in seasonal cycle phase and amplitude to age the water mass, infer circulation and mixing, and understand the transport and eventual fate of IW in the Strait of Georgia. The second method uses particle tracking techniques implemented using SalishSeaCast model velocity outputs to similar effect. The IW circulation is found to be more complex than previously anticipated, with a direct alteration of circulation via inputs to the north of the region, a distinct cyclonic flow in the primary basin, and a strong inflowing boundary current on the eastern shores. Furthermore, we find evidence that wastewater tracer concentrations downstream of major effluent outfalls are consistent with our inferences of IW pathways.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".