The purpose of the project is to quantify, in a new project, the effects of shallow water turbulence on the material fluxes of different particle types which will provide insights into the importance of this process in governing the source, transport, and fate of benthic microalgae, particulate organic matter, and sediments across the sediment-water boundary of estuaries. Furthermore, these results can be coupled with existing hydrodynamic models to provide system-wide estimates of benthic-pelagic exchange of particulates.
The objectives of this proposal will be to (1) determine experimentally the relationship between physical hydrodynamic forcing and resuspension of benthic microalgae (BMA), particulate organic matter (POM), and suspended sediments (SS) into the water column, in a tidal creek environment, (2) differentiate the particle dynamics of sediment and BMA and identify the seasonal components, and (3) parameterize benthic fluxes of BMA into a geochemical module that can be integrated in existing physical numerical models.