BUMP Professor Duncan Fitzgerald Published in Coastal Sediments
BUMP Professor Duncan Fitzgerald was involved in a study on the transport of sediment by storms as well as the exchange at coastal intel systems. Day to day processes produce long-term, slowly evolving coastal landscapes, however, storms can significantly overprint coastal morphology in hours to days. Recent modeling explores how storms can perturb normal (non-storm) hydrodynamics and sediment transport trends at mixed-energy tidal inlets. Here we evaluate the role of storms characteristics, and the timing between the storm surge peak with high tide on storm net sediment fluxes and sediment provenance using a hydrodynamic model. Our modeling of synthetic storms show that elevated water levels caused by storm surges produce strong flood tidal currents. During this time flood currents overwhelm normal ebb dominance and seaward transport in the inlet channel allowing sand, silt, and clay to move into the backbarrier. Much of the sand remains in the backbarrier building flood deltas, point bars, and tidal flats. The future increase in storm magnitude and frequency related to global warming will increase longshore transport rates leading to the capture of more sand in backbarrier shoals, ultimately depleting barrier islands of sand reservoirs and hastening their erosion and long-term deterioration. Read more here.