Observations of the bottom boundary layer on the inner West Florida Shelf were made with a downward looking pulse coherent acoustic Doppler profiler throughout the passage of Tropical Storm Isadore during September 2002. The storm passed through the Gulf of Mexico roughly 780 km offshore of the Florida study site. Significant wave heights ranged from 0 m to 2.5 m within a span of eight days. The excellent, non-invasive, 5 cm resolution of the near bed (bottom meter) mean flows were used to estimate bed shear velocity and bottom roughness using the standard log-layer approach. A unique opportunity to examine boundary layer structure was provided by the high-resolution data. Calculated friction velocity due to currents (u*c) and apparent bottom roughness (z0) reduced considerably when velocity measurements closer to the bed were emphasized. This observation may be indicative of segmentation within the bottom boundary layer and has implications for common practices of estimating bed shear stress measurements from distances greater than a few tens of centimeters above the bed. Acoustic backscatter strength was used as a proxy for sediment suspension in the water column revealing no relationship between current parameters and sediment resuspension during the ten-day data set. Wave effects were included following the work of Grant and Madsen and others with strong relationships between wave and wave-current parameters and the ABS as a proxy for sediment resuspension evident.

The ecological effects and mechanistic efficiency of chemical oil spill countermeasures must be evaluated prior to their ethical application during real spill response scenarios. Equally important is the ability to monitor the effectiveness of any spill response in real time, permitting informed response management. In-situ sensors are key components of such event based monitoring and continuous monitoring programs. This project investigates crude oil toxicity as a particulate suspension, suitability of in-situ instrumentation to measure crude oil suspensions, and the applicability of using acoustic backscatter to measure suspended solids and sub-surface oil droplet suspension concentrations. The ecological effects to inter- and sub-tidal sediment dwelling organisms exposed to crude oil, both treated with a chemical dispersant and un-treated, was evaluated. Elevated toxicity, expressed as percent mortality and reduced luminescence, and oil concentrations were observed in inter-tidal sediments receiving oil only treatments compared to oil-plus-dispersant treatments. Sub-tidal sediments showed heterogeneous distribution of crude oil with elevated amphipod mortality compared to no oil controls suggesting an oil-sediment aggregation mechanism. A separate laboratory scale study found that the soluble crude oil fractions were responsible for the observed mortality in pelagic species while the more dominant oil droplet fractions were relatively non-toxic. Subsequent studies focused on the in-situ detection of crude oil and particle suspensions in aqueous environments. The first showed that both in-situ fluorescence spectroscopy and Laser In-Situ Scattering Transmissometry (LISST) can effectively measure crude oil concentrations in aqueous environments. The applicability of the LISST implies that crude oil in an aqueous medium can be measured as a particle suspension. Acoustic backscatter (ABS) was investigated for its applicability as a surrogate measurement technology for aqueous particle suspensions. This study showed a log linear correlation between ABS and volume concentration (VC) over a variable particle size distribution. This correlation is due to the dependency of both ABS and VC to the particle size distribution. Log-linear ABS responses to oil-droplet suspension volume concentrations were also demonstrated. However, the inability to reproduce response factors suggests that more work is required to produce viable calibrations that may be used for sub-surface oil plume detection.

A 3-axis acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) with high sampling rate was used to measure the bed shear stress and turbulence under wave-current interaction conditions in this study. Experimental sites include laboratory tank, Love River in Kaohsiung and Howan coastal waters in Pingtung. Bed shear stress is estimated primarily by the inertial dissipation method, also by the turbulent kinetic energy method and eddy correlation method. Results of the laboratory experiments indicate that the bed shear stress increases as both the flow speed and wave height increase, and the flow speed is a more important factor. Field experiments can be divided into several types. The first type is under slow flows and calm waves. Love River is a typical condition of this type with turbid waters and a low flow speed. During the experimental period the ADV correlations reach 90% or more. Because the river flow is quite small, no significant bed shear stress is produced and u* is mostly less than 1 cm/s. As a result the deposition effect is much larger than erosion, thus a very thick layer of mud is formed on the riverbed. The observations in Howan in April 2010 also reveal the condition of slow flows and small waves, and the bed shear stress is also quite small. Due to the factors of clean coastal waters and weak turbulence in this season, the quality of ADV signals is poor. The second type is under large flows and small waves, as shown from the observations of Howan in April 2011, during which the maximum speed reached 25 cm/s and wave heights less than 20 cm. In this experiment the shear stress is large, the u* are mostly greater than 0.8 cm/s and the value of the drag coefficient is 0.0021; the ADV signals have good quality and the inertial sub-range is well defined. The third type is under weak flows and large waves. The observations of Howan in July 2011 show significant rainfall and maximum wave heights of 90 cm. In this case the u* are mostly centered around 1 cm/s. The acoustic backscatter intensity is positively correlated with the turbidity and wave height. Sizable bed shear stress induced by the orbital velocity of waves contributes a significant part to the total bed shear stress.