Geostatistical Prediction of Ocean Outfall Plume Characteristics Based on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Geostatistics has been successfully used to analyse and characterize the spatial variability of environmental properties. Besides providing estimated values at unsampled locations, geostatistics measures the accuracy of the estimate, which is a significant advantage over traditional methods used to assess pollution. This work uses universal block kriging to model and map the spatial distribution of salinity measurements gathered by an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle in a sea outfall monitoring campaign. The aim is to distinguish the effluent plume from the receiving waters, characterizing its spatial variability in the vicinity of the discharge and estimating dilution. The results demonstrate that geostatistical methodology can provide good estimates of the dispersion of effluents, which are valuable in assessing the environmental impact and managing sea outfalls. Moreover, since accurate measurements of the plume’s dilution are rare, these studies may be very helpful in the future to validate dispersion models.