CSDMS 2015 annual meeting poster PatriciaWiberg
Quantifying the spatial distribution of bed properties in shallow coastal bays
Joel Carr, University of Virginia, Virginia, United States.
Ilgar Safak, University of Virginia, Virginia, United States.
Abstract:
Sediment resuspension and related increases in turbidity in shallow coastal bays are strongly controlled by local bed properties. However, knowledge of bed properties in coastal bays is typically sparse at best. In this study we developed a method to estimate the spatial distribution of bed properties in shallow coastal bays using a combination of bed sediment measurements and residence time calculations that requires neither extensive dedicated modeling nor extensive sampling. We found a strong relationship between water residence times derived from a coastal hydrodynamic model and observed bed grain size fractions in a system of coastal bays and used that relationship to transform maps of residence time to maps of grain size fractions throughout the bays. Because grain-size fractions are related to other bed properties such as organic fraction, permeability and cohesion, these maps provide valuable information for habitat studies as well as morphodynamic modeling.
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