Coastal and Continental Shelf Oceanography

OBJECTIVES: The long-term goal is improved predictions for the dynamic adjustment of mobile beds to combined wave-current forcing in nearshore and continental shelf environments. The primary short term goal is to pursue the use and development of advanced acoustic remote sensing systems for investigating the turbulent fluxes of momentum and sediment in the bottom boundary layer under active transport conditions, and the extreme value statistics of turbulence in high-flow tidal channels.

APPROACH: (1) A state-of-the art, high-resolution, turbulence-resolving, multi-frequency acoustic Doppler profiling system developed in-house will be used in laboratory and field experiments to remotely measure the space-time structure of velocity, turbulence and sediment flux above evolving mobile beds. (2) The variability of turbulence on 1-second to 1-month time scales will be investigated at mid-depth in high-flow tidal channels both directly, using in situ fast-response turbulence probes, and remotely, using multiple advanced acoustic Doppler systems. (3) Mobile bed adjustment to wave-current forcing in the nearshore zone and inner continental shelf during storms, and adjustment of dunes and mega-dunes to the intense turbulence and reversing current conditions in high-flow tidal channels, will be investigated using an instrumented robotic surface vehicle.

SIGNIFICANCE: The adjustment of mobile seabed sediments to fluid forcing variability is one of the important challenges in modern ocean science. The importance resides in: (A) the applied science and societal needs for more accurate predictions of seabed change related to shoreline and coastal infrastructure protection traditionally, and now including the effects of seabed stability on the potential development of high-flow tidal channels for renewable hydroelectric power generation using in-stream turbines; (B) the effects of turbulence and seabed adjustment on the predictability of coastal and shelf-wide environmental conditions, and (C) in the potential for improved interpretation of paleo-environmental conditions through the sedimentary record. The challenges reside in: (1) the observational difficulties, (2) in the responses of the mobile sediments and the motion of the overlying fluid being both mutual and non-linear, and (3) in the fundamental connections to fluid turbulence, one of the great unsolved problems in classical physics.