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These data represent the geographic area described in Title 50 CFR Part 622.2, Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic, Subpart A—General Provisions, Definitions and acronyms as of 2/5/2014.
For the Atlantic coastal region, seven years of modeled mean wind speed data on an approximately 2-km grid were obtained from NREL’s WIND Toolkit (http://www.nrel.gov/grid/wind-toolkit.html). Each 1.2-km BOEM aliquot grid cell was assigned a mean wind speed that corresponds to the nearest 2-km WIND Toolkit grid cell representing the majority of its area. The Weibull parameters were estimated by computing the parameters of a Weibull distribution that has the same mean speed and wind energy as the WIND Toolkit data. This process created a long-term, monthly, and hourly (by month and for the whole 7-year period) Weibull representation of the wind speed for each aliquot. The resulting dataset is intended to provide broad estimates of wind speed variation for the purposes of identifying possible good wind energy sites. It is not intended to provide estimates of possible energy production for the purpose of making offshore wind project investment or financing decisions in specific locations.
Explanation of Attributes: Results in the geodatabase are reported on the existing 1.2 km x 1.2 km aliquot grid defined by BOEM for the Atlantic coastal region. Wind speed statistics are reported at the center point of each aliquot grid, but represent the mean values over the entire area of each grid cell. The data set delivered to BOEM is a geodatabase consisting of 14 layers. There is one layer for the long-term statistics, one layer for each month, and one polygon layer of aliquots covered by the data. The long-term shapefile includes mean wind speed and Weibull parameters to capture the long-term wind speed distribution of the entire 7-year time series. Each monthly shapefile contains mean wind speed and Weibull parameters for that month overall and for each hour of the day within that month. All times are in EST (UTC-5).
Variables starting with ‘WS’ are wind speeds in meters per second, those starting with ‘WK’ are Weibull k parameters (dimensionless), and those starting with ‘WC’ are Weibull c (scale) parmeters in meters per second. The string ‘xxx’ (where xxx is a month) in a variable name means that the parameter has been computed using only values from month ‘xxx’ (e.g., ‘JUN_WS’ is the average wind speed in June). The string ‘Hxx’ (where xx is a number from 0 to 23) in a variable name means that the parameter has been computed using only values from hour ‘xx’ (e.g., ‘JUN_H16_WS’ is the average wind speed at 1600 (or 4:00 PM) in June).
Coastal restoration, beach nourishment, and habitat reconstruction are crucial to mitigate future coastal erosion, land loss, flooding, and storm damage along the US Atlantic coast. The success of long-term effort partially depends on locating and securing significant quantities of OCS sediment resources that are compatible with the target environments being restored. Offshore sand resources, like upland sources, are extremely scarce where most needed. Additionally, some areas of these relatively small offshore sand resources are not extractable because of the presence of infrastructure or sensitive areas (e.g. archaeological sites, protected habitat, etc.). Since the use of OCS sediment resources is authorized by the BOEM through its Marine Minerals Program, the bureau is implementing measures to help safeguard the most significant OCS sediment resources, reduce multiple use conflicts, minimize interference with existing leases (e.g. renewable energy) and rights-of-way (e.g. submerged infrastructure, shipping lanes, military operations, etc.), and help avoid sensitive areas (e.g. archaeological sites, protected habitat). The Atlantic Sand Aliquots dataset contains Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) block aliquots (1/16th of OCS protraction grid block) in the BOEM Atlantic Ocean Region that lie at least partially within a 1 statute mile buffer of where OCS sand resources have been identified through reconnaissance and/or design-level studies. During the planning process, entities may reference the aliquot attributes provided in this dataset to inquire about specific resources within those areas. In doing so, the BOEM MMP can continue to serve as an effective steward of our OCS resources. This dataset will be updated as new information about OCS sand resources is incorporated into the Marine Minerals Information System (MMIS).