Tidal asymmetry in estuaries with mixed semidiurnal/diurnal tides

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 115 (2010): C08006, doi:10.1029/2009JC005864.Tidal asymmetry in estuaries with mixed, mainly semidiurnal tides arises from both the interaction of principal tides and the higher harmonics generated by distortions within the estuary. The duration asymmetry in rise and fall of water level caused by principal tides on the west coast of the continental United States is ebb-dominant, and so the tide entering estuaries is also ebb-dominant, prior to any internal distortions within the estuary. The interaction of higher harmonics with principal constituents either augments or cancels the duration asymmetry in the principal tides. In estuaries where tidal elevation and velocity phase are near quadrature (90° out of phase), the duration asymmetry in tidal elevation leads to asymmetries in tidal current magnitude. Asymmetry can be conveniently quantified in terms of the sample skewness, γ1, the normalized third sample moment about the mean. An analytic approximation to the skewness shows that traditional metrics of asymmetry, namely the ratio of constituent amplitudes and the relative constituent phase difference, arise from calculating the third sample moment. Observations from three California estuaries of different morphologies are presented as an illustration of how skewness can be used to quantify asymmetry in real systems. As in semidiurnal systems, morphology is a good predictor of whether higher harmonics engender ebb-dominance or flood-dominance, however asymmetry imposed by principal tides at the mouth must first be overcome and so there is a spatial evolution in the total asymmetry. Quantifying observations via skewness should be considered in addition to traditional metrics in estuaries with mixed tides.Support for the writing and publication of the manuscript was provided via the Stanford Singapore Partnership while I was a Guest Investigator with D. Ralston at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and by USGS/WHOI Postdoctoral Scholar funds

Inferring tidal wetland stability from channel sediment fluxes : observations and a conceptual model

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 118 (2013): 2045–2058, doi:10.1002/jgrf.20143.Anthropogenic and climatic forces have modified the geomorphology of tidal wetlands over a range of timescales. Changes in land use, sediment supply, river flow, storminess, and sea level alter the layout of tidal channels, intertidal flats, and marsh plains; these elements define wetland complexes. Diagnostically, measurements of net sediment fluxes through tidal channels are high-temporal resolution, spatially integrated quantities that indicate (1) whether a complex is stable over seasonal timescales and (2) what mechanisms are leading to that state. We estimated sediment fluxes through tidal channels draining wetland complexes on the Blackwater and Transquaking Rivers, Maryland, USA. While the Blackwater complex has experienced decades of degradation and been largely converted to open water, the Transquaking complex has persisted as an expansive, vegetated marsh. The measured net export at the Blackwater complex (1.0 kg/s or 0.56 kg/m2/yr over the landward marsh area) was caused by northwesterly winds, which exported water and sediment on the subtidal timescale; tidally forced net fluxes were weak and precluded landward transport of suspended sediment from potential seaward sources. Though wind forcing also exported sediment at the Transquaking complex, strong tidal forcing and proximity to a turbidity maximum led to an import of sediment (0.031 kg/s or 0.70 kg/m2/yr). This resulted in a spatially averaged accretion of 3.9 mm/yr, equaling the regional relative sea level rise. Our results suggest that in areas where seaward sediment supply is dominant, seaward wetlands may be more capable of withstanding sea level rise over the short term than landward wetlands. We propose a conceptual model to determine a complex's tendency toward stability or instability based on sediment source, wetland channel location, and transport mechanisms. Wetlands with a reliable portfolio of sources and transport mechanisms appear better suited to offset natural and anthropogenic loss.Funding was provided by the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program and the Climate and Land Use Change Research and Development Program.2014-04-0

Effects of estuarine and fluvial processes on sediment transport over deltaic tidal flats

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Continental Shelf Research 60, Suppl. (2013): S40–S57, doi:10.1016/j.csr.2012.02.004.Tidal flats at a river mouth feature estuarine and fluvial processes that distinguish them from tidal flats without river discharge. We combine field observations and a numerical model to investigate hydrodynamics and sediment transport on deltaic tidal flats at the mouth of the Skagit River, in Puget Sound, WA during the spring freshet. River discharge over tidal flats supplies a mean volume flux, freshwater buoyancy, and suspended sediment. Despite the shallow water depths, strong horizontal density fronts and stratification develop, resulting in a baroclinic pressure gradient and tidal variability in stratification that favor flood-directed bottom stresses. In addition to these estuarine processes, the river discharge during periods of low tide drains through a network of distributary channels on the exposed tidal flats, with strongly ebb-directed stresses. The net sediment transport depends on the balance between estuarine and fluvial processes, and is modulated on a spring-neap time scale by the tides of Puget Sound. We find that the baroclinic pressure gradient and periodic stratification enhance trapping of sediment delivered by the river on the tidal flats, particularly during neap tides, and that sediment trapping also depends on settling and scour lags, particularly for finer particles. The primary means of moving sediment off of the tidal flats are the high velocities and stresses in the distributary channels during late stages of ebbs and around low tides, with sediment export predominantly occurring during spring low tides that expose a greater portion of the flats. The 3-d finite volume numerical model was evaluated against observations and had good skill overall, particularly for velocity and salinity. The model performed poorly at simulating the shallow flows around low tides as the flats drained and river discharge was confined to distributary channels, due in part to limitations in grid resolution, seabed sediment and bathymetric data, and the wetting-and-drying scheme. Consequently, the model predicted greater sediment retention on the flats than was observed.This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research

Local diurnal wind‐driven variability and upwelling in a small coastal embayment

The oceanic response to high‐frequency local diurnal wind forcing is examined in a small coastal embayment located along an understudied stretch of the central California coast. We show that local diurnal wind forcing is the dominant control on nearshore temperature variability and circulation patterns. A complex empirical orthogonal function (CEOF) analysis of velocities in San Luis Obispo Bay reveals that the first‐mode CEOF amplitude time series, which accounts for 47.9% of the variance, is significantly coherent with the local wind signal at the diurnal frequency and aligns with periods of weak and strong wind forcing. The diurnal evolution of the hydrographic structure and circulation in the bay is examined using both individual events and composite‐day averages. During the late afternoon, the local wind strengthens and results in a sheared flow with near‐surface warm waters directed out of the bay and a compensating flow of colder waters into the bay over the bottom portion of the water column. This cold water intrusion into the bay causes isotherms to shoal toward the surface and delivers subthermocline waters to shallow reaches of the bay, representing a mechanism for small‐scale upwelling. When the local winds relax, the warm water mass advects back into the bay in the form of a buoyant plume front. Local diurnal winds are expected to play an important role in nearshore dynamics and local upwelling in other small coastal embayments with important implications for various biological and ecological processes

Turbulent mixing in a far‐field plume during the transition to upwelling conditions : microstructure observations from an AUV

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 45 (2018): 9765-9773, doi:10.1029/2018GL078543.A REMUS 600 autonomous underwater vehicle was used to measure turbulent mixing within the far‐field Chesapeake Bay plume during the transition to upwelling. Prior to the onset of upwelling, the plume was mixed by a combination of energetic downwelling winds and bottom‐generated shear resulting in a two‐layer plume structure. Estimates of turbulent dissipation and buoyancy flux from a nose‐mounted microstructure system indicate that scalar exchange within the plume was patchy and transient, with direct wind mixing constrained to the near surface by stratification within the plume. Changing wind and tide conditions contributed to temporal variability. Following the separation of the upper plume from the coast, alongshore shear became a significant driver of mixing on the shoreward edge of the plume.NSF Grant Numbers: OCE‐1334231, OCE‐1745258, OCE‐13343982019-03-2

Similarity scaling of turbulence spectra and cospectra in a shallow tidal flow

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): C10019, doi:10.1029/2011JC007144.Measured turbulence power spectra, cospectra, and ogive curves from a shallow tidal flow were scaled using Monin-Obukhov similarity theory to test the applicability to a generic tidal flow of universal curves found from a uniform, neutrally stable atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). While curves from individual 10 min data bursts deviate significantly from similarity theory, averages over large numbers of sufficiently energetic bursts follow the general shape. However, there are several differences: (1) Variance in the measured curves was shifted toward higher frequencies, (2) at low frequencies, velocity spectra were significantly more energetic than theory while cospectra were weaker, and (3) spectral ratios of momentum flux normalized by turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) indicate decreased fluxes and/or elevated TKE levels. Several features of the turbulence structure may explain these differences. First, turbulent dissipation exceeded production, indicating nonequilibrium turbulence, possibly from advection of TKE. Indeed, using the production rate rather than dissipation markedly improves agreement in the inertial subrange. Second, spectral lag of the largest eddies due to inhomogeneous boundary conditions and decaying turbulence could explain spectral deviations from theory at low frequencies. Finally, since the largest eddies dominate momentum transfer, the consequence of the cospectra difference is that calculated ogive curves produced smaller total momentum fluxes compared to theory, partly because of countergradient fluxes. While ABL similarity scaling applied to marine bottom boundary layers (MBBLs) will produce curves with the general shape of the universal curves, care should be taken in determining details of turbulent energy and stress estimates, particularly in shallow and inhomogeneous MBBLs.The data were collected with support from NSF grant ECCS‐0308070 to SGM as part of the LOBO program (Ken Johnson, P.I.). The analysis presented here was supported by the Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) Program and through ONR grant N00014‐ 10‐1‐0236 (Scientific officers: Thomas Drake, C. Linwood Vincent, and Terri Paluszkiewicz). Additional support was provided by the Stanford Graduate Fellowship (SGF)

Allometric scaling of estuarine ecosystem metabolism

There are still significant uncertainties in the magnitude and direction of carbon fluxes through coastal ecosystems. An important component of these biogeochemical budgets is ecosystem metabolism, the net result of organismal metabolic processes within an ecosystem. In this paper, I present a synthesis of published ecosystem metabolism studies from coastal ecosystems and describe an empirical observation that size-dependent patterns in aquatic gross primary production and community respiration exist across a wide range of coastal geomorphologies. Ecosystem metabolism scales to the 3/4 power with volume in deeper estuaries dominated by pelagic primary production and nearly linearly with area in shallow estuaries dominated by benthic primary production. These results can be explained by applying scaling arguments for efficient, directed transport networks developed to explain similar size-dependent patterns in organismal metabolism. The main conclusion from this synthesis is that the residence time of new, nutrient-rich water is a fundamental organizing principle for the observed patterns. Residence time changes allometrically with size in pelagic ecosystems because velocities change by only an order of magnitude across systems that span more than ten orders of magnitude in size. This nonisometric change in velocity with size requires lower specific metabolic rates at larger ecosystem sizes. This change in transport may also explain a shift from predominantly net heterotrophy to net autotrophy with increasing size. The scaling results are applied to the total estuarine area in the continental United States to estimate the contribution of estuarine systems to the overall coastal budget of organic carbon

The impact of wind forcing on the thermal wind shear of a river plume

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Mazzini, P. L. F., Chant, R. J., Scully, M. E., Wilkin, J., Hunter, E. J., & Nidzieko, N. J. The impact of wind forcing on the thermal wind shear of a river plume. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 124, (2019): 7908–7925, doi: 10.1029/2019JC015259.A 38-day long time series obtained using a combination of moored Wirewalkers equipped with conductivity-temperature-depth profilers and bottom-mounted and subsurface acoustic Doppler current profilers provided detailed high-resolution observations that resolved near-surface velocity and vertical and cross-shelf density gradients of the Chesapeake Bay plume far field. This unprecedented data set allowed for a detailed investigation of the impact of wind forcing on the thermal wind shear of a river plume. Our results showed that thermal wind balance was a valid approximation for the cross-shelf momentum balance over the entire water column during weak winds (|w | < 0.075 Pa), and it was also valid within the interior during moderate downwelling (−0.125< w < −0.075 Pa). Stronger wind conditions, however, resulted in the breakdown of the thermal wind balance in the Chesapeake Bay plume, with thermal wind shear overestimating the observed shear during downwelling and underestimating during upwelling conditions. A momentum budget analysis suggests that viscous stresses from wind-generated turbulence are mainly responsible for the generation of ageostrophic shear.This study was supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE 1334231. We thank Ken Roma from R/V Arabella for his incredible support in our daily cruises to survey CBP. We also thank the Crew and Captains of the R/V Sharp and R/V Savannah for their efforts in deploying and recovering the moored instrumentation. Eli Hunter was responsible for preprocessing the data and provided invaluable assistance with field work and data collection. The data used in this publication are available in an open access repository (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3525394) or by contacting the author

The Fate of Nitrogen in Dredged Material Used for Tidal Marsh Restoration

Tidal marsh restoration using dredged material is being undertaken in many coastal areas to replace lost habitat and ecosystem services due to tidal marsh loss. The fate of high levels of nitrogen (N) in fine-grained dredged material used as a substrate for marsh restoration is uncertain, but if exported tidally may cause subtidal habitat degradation. In this study, a mass balance was developed to characterize N fluxes in a two-year-old restored tidal marsh constructed with fine-grained dredged material at Poplar Island, MD, in Chesapeake Bay, and to evaluate the potential impact on the adjacent submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) habitat. Denitrification and N accumulation in Spartina organic matter were identified as the major sinks (21.31 and 28.5 mg N m−2 d−1, respectively), while tidal export of TN was more modest (9.4 mg N m−2 d−1) and inorganic N export was low (1.59 mg N m−2 d−1). Internal cycling helped retain N within the marsh. Mineralization of N associated with labile organic matter in the dredged material was likely a large, but unquantified, source of N supporting robust plant growth and N exports. Exceedances of SAV water quality habitat requirements in the subtidal region adjacent to the marsh were driven by elevated Chesapeake Bay concentrations rather than enrichment by the marsh