Oceanography The Official Magazine of
The Oceanography Society
Volume 21 Issue 04

View Issue TOC
Volume 21, No. 4
Pages 168 - 172

OpenAccess

Quantifying Benthic Exchange of Fine Sediment via Continuous, Noninvasive Measurements of Settling Velocity and Bed Erodibility

By Carl T. Friedrichs , Grace M. Cartwright, and Patrick J. Dickhudt 
Jump to
Citation References Copyright & Usage
First Paragraph

Benthic exchange of fine sediment has major implications for the structure and function of shelf and estuarine environments. Globally, the transport of particulate organic carbon from the land to the sea is closely associated with transport of mud (McKee et al., 2004). Fine sediment transport is particularly important to the occurrence of coastal eutrophication and to the fate and burial of pollutants because nutrients and contaminants tend to adsorb preferentially onto small particles (Lee and Wiberg, 2002). However, progress in characterizing muddy benthic exchange dynamics in the past has been slow because erosion and settling properties of fine sediment remain difficult to predict. Thanks in part to the availability of continuous, noninvasive measurements, initial results from the CoOP Multidisciplinary Benthic Exchange Dynamics (MUDBED) project strongly suggest that depositional events play a key role in perturbing bed erodibility and particle settling velocity away from more stable, biologically mediated values.

Citation

Friedrichs, C.T., G.M. Cartwright, and P.J. Dickhudt. 2008. Quantifying benthic exchange of fine sediment via continuous, noninvasive measurements of settling velocity and bed erodibility. Oceanography 21(4):168–172, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2008.14.

References

Dickhudt, P.J. 2008. Controls on Erodibility in a Partially Mixed Estuary: York River, Virginia. MS Thesis, School of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA.

Dyer, K.R., J. Conrelisse, M.P. Dearnaley, M.J. Fennessy, S.E.Jones, J. Kappenberg, I.N. McCave, M. Pejrup, W. Puls, W. Van Leussen, and K. Wolfstein. 1996. A comparison of in situ techniques for estuarine floc settling velocity measurement. Journal of Sea Research 26:15–29.

Fugate, D.C., and C.T. Friedrichs. 2002. Determining concentration and fall velocity of estuarine particle populations using ADV, OBS and LISST. Continental Shelf Research 22:1,867–1,886.

Fugate, D.C., and C.T. Friedrichs. 2003. Controls on suspended aggregate size in partially mixed estuaries. Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science 58:389–404.

Harris, C.K., P. Traykovski, and W.R. Geyer. 2005. Flood dispersal and deposition by near-bed gravitational sediment flows and oceanographic transport: A numerical modeling study of the Eel River shelf, northern California. Journal of Geophysical Research 110(C09025), doi:10.0129/2004JC002727.

Holdaway, G.P., P.D. Thorne, D. Flatt, S.E. Jones, and D. Prandle. 1999. Comparison between ADCP and transmissometer measurements of suspended sediment concentration. Continental Shelf Research 19:421–441.

Lee, H.J., and P.L. Wiberg. 2002. Character, fate, and biological effects of contaminated, effluent-affected sediment on the Palos Verdes margin, southern California: An overview. Continental Shelf Research 22:835–840.

McKee, B.A., R.C. Aller, M.A. Allison, T.S. Bianchi, and G.C. Kineke. 2004. Transport and transformation of dissolved and particulate materials on continental margins influenced by major rivers: Benthic boundary layer and seabed processes. Continental Shelf Research 24:899–926.

Rhoads, D.C., D.F. Boesch, T. Zhican, X. Fengshan, H. Liqiang, and K.J. Nilsen. 1985. Macrobenthos and sedimentary facies on the Changjiang delta platform and adjacent continental shelf, East China Sea. Continental Shelf Research 4:189–213.

Rinehimer, J.P. 2008. Sediment Transport and Erodibility in the York River Estuary: A Model Study. MS Thesis, School of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA.

Sanford, L.P. 2006. Uncertainties in sediment erodibility estimates due to a lack of standards for experimental protocols and data interpretation. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management 2:29–34.

Schaffner, L.C., E.K. Hinchey, T.M. Dellapenna, C.T. Friedrichs, M. Thompson Neubauer, M.E. Smith, and S.A. Kuehl. 2001. Physical energy regimes, sea-bed dynamics and organism-sediment interactions along an estuarine gradient. Pp. 161–419 in: Organism-Sediment Interactions, J.Y. Aller, S.A. Woodin, and R.C. Aller, eds, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC.

Van Rijn, L.C. 1993. Principles of Sediment Transport in Rivers, Estuaries and Coastal Seas. Aqua Publications, Amsterdam, 415 pp.

Copyright & Usage

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.