Coastal bays and salt marshes are buffer zones located at the interface between land and ocean, and provide ecologically and commercially important services worldwide. Unfortunately, their location makes them vulnerable and sensitive to sea-level rise (SLR), reduced sediment loads and anthropogenic modifications of the shoreline. Sediment budget and sediment availability are direct metrics for evaluating the resilience of salt marshes and coastal bays to various stressors (e.g. SLR). Salt marshes requires adequate sediment inputs to maintain their elevation with respect to sea level. Understanding sediment trajectories, sediment fluxes and sediment trapping capacities in different geomorphic unit facilitates efficient restorations and coastal management. In this research I used remote sensing, field observations and numerical modelling in the Plum Island Sound in Massachusetts, USA, to explore mechanisms controlling sediment dynamics and their feedbacks with SLR.
The analysis of remote-sensed suspended sediment concentrations (SSC) reveals that a 5-year record (2013-2018) is sufficient to capture a representative range of meteorological and tidal conditions required to determine the main drivers of SSC dynamics in hydrodynamically-complex and small-scale coastal bays. The interplay between river and tidal flows dominated SSC dynamics in this estuary, whereas wind-driven resuspension had a more moderate effect. The SSC was higher during spring because of increased river discharge due to snowmelt. Tidal asymmetry also enhanced sediment resuspension during flood tides, possibly favoring deposition on marsh platforms. Together, water level, water-level rate of change, river discharge and wind speed were able to explain > 60% of the variability in the main channel SSC, thereby facilitating future prediction of SSC from these readily available variables.
To determine the fate of cohesive sediments and spatial variations of trapping capacity in the system, a high-resolution (20 m) numerical model coupled to a vegetation module was developed. The results highlight the importance of the timing between sediment inputs and tidal phase and show that sediment discharged from tidal rivers deposit within the rivers themselves or in adjacent marshes. Most sediment is deposited in shallow tidal flats and channels and is unable to penetrate farther inside the marshes because of the limited water depths and velocities on the marsh platform. Trapping capacity of sediment in different intertidal subdomains decreases logarithmically with the ratio between advection length and the typical length of channels and tidal flats. Moreover, sediment deposition on the marsh decreases exponentially with distance from the channels and marsh edge. This decay rate is a function of settling velocity and the maximum value of water depth and velocity on the marsh platform.
Bed sediment compositions were generated to further explore feedbacks between SLR, sediment dynamics and morphological changes. The results show SLR increases tidal prism and inundation depth, facilitating sediment deposition on the marsh platform. At the same time, SLR enhances ebb-dominated currents and increases sediment resuspension, reducing the sediment-trapping capacity of tidal flats and bays, leading to a negative sediment budget for the entire system. This bimodal distribution of sediment budget trajectories will have a profound impact on the morphology of coastal bays, increasing the difference in elevation between salt marshes and tidal flats and potentially affecting intertidal ecosystems. The results also clearly indicate that landforms lower with respect to the tidal frame are more affected by SLR than salt marshes. Therefore, Salt marshes, shallow bays, tidal flats, and barrier islands are inherently and physically connected systems, and evaluating the effect of SLR on salt marshes should involve all these units.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/42052 |
| Date | 15 February 2021 |
| Creators | Zhang, Xiaohe |
| Contributors | Fagherazzi, Sergio |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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