***Modeling San Diego Bay to Aid Resource Management*
Analytical methods and software models are being developed in  order to increase understanding of SanDiego Bay.  One application is  to study environmental risks such as contaminant spills, and the dynamics of animal communities.  The tools that are being developed  will provide access to the bestand most comprehensible  information available to aid public policy makers in managing the  use of thebay.  The methods and procedures developed will be able  to be generalized to other geographic areasin the U.S. and around the  world. 
San Diego Bay is one of the great natural harbors of the world.  First  sighted by Juan RodriguezCabrillo in 1542, it is 22 square miles in  size, with its deep-water harbor sheltered by thepeninsulas of  Point Loma and Coronado.  Five municipalities (San Diego, Chula  Vista, National City,Imperial Beach, and Coronado) share the  coastline of the bay, and many more depend on it for domesticand  international commerce and diverse recreational activities.  In  addition, the Nation depends onSan Diego Bay to support the Pacific  fleet for national defense. 
Regulatory oversight of the bay is assigned to some 26 organizations  and municipalities involved inusing and managing it.  They include  Federal, state, and local organizations:  EPA, U.S. Fish andWildlife  Service, California Department of Fish and Game, and the County  Health Department. Legislation has established the San Diego Bay  Interagency Water Quality Panel (Bay Panel) tocoordinate the  environmental monitoring activities of these groups; the Panel funds  this project. Bay Panel participants also include NOAA, the U.S.  Navy, the City of San Diego, the Port of SanDiego, the Audubon  Society, and the Environmental Health Coalition. 
The central focus of this effort is to develop a visual three- dimensional model of the bay based onphysical, biological, and  chemical data contributed by 35 data collection programs.  Such visualization will provide the Panel with a complete picture of what  is and is not known about thecomplex conditions of the bay and will  help monitor the success or failure of policy decisions overtime. 
The first year's activities focus on acquiring and reviewing the data,  establishing quality controlto ensure that units of measurement are  consistent and that anomalies are revealed and evaluated, and centralizing the data on a server at SDSC that is accessible over the  Internet.  The resultingdatabase will be used to develop thematic  data layers for presentation in the visual model, findcorrelations  among interdisciplinary data, and support the examination of gaps in  thespatio-temporal record and redundancies in monitoring  programs, which waste labor and financialresources.  Then work  will turn to developing the visual model and doing preliminary  hydrodynamicmodeling.  The visualization will include animated  sequences over time and space to illustratevariations in population  densities, water quality, and sediment characteristics.  The second  andthird years call for development of analytical and predictive  models.  Model results and animationsaccessible via three- dimensional browsers will be made available on the server.**