The University of Alaska’s Sea-Air-Land Monitoring and Observing Network (SALMON) Project, in partnership with the Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP), is mapping the currents and tides of Cook Inlet.

Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage and is one of the busiest waterways in the state with both strong currents and tides. The SALMON Project is using two Costal Ocean Dynamics Application Radar (CODAR) stations installed along the lower Cook Inlet shoreline to map the surface currents and tides. Similar to weather radar, the CODAR stations use high frequency backscatter radar technology to cover more than 1,350 square miles of the lower Cook Inlet. These two stations will be collecting information through November 2007.

Benefits of the SALMON Project include:

• Improved safety and marine operations;

• Improved effectiveness in search and rescue operations;

• Improved safety for coastal inhabitants from natural hazards such as tsunamis;

• Improved ability to track and predict the movements of sediments, living organisms, and pollutants within the Cook Inlet; and,

• Ability to track changes in the ocean to sea ice conditions, winds, and ocean bottom.

The development of real-time and near real-time maps of the Cook Inlet’s surface currents displaying speed and direction are available at http://ak.aoos.org/op/data.php?region=COOK&name=codar.

The CODAR stations are installed near Anchor Point and Nanwalek, Alaska and cover an area more than 1,350 square miles between Anchor Point in the north to Augustine Island in the west, south to the Kenai Peninsula, and east to the entrance of Kachemak Bay. Each uses two antennae, a transmitter, and receiver.

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