HR: 0800h
AN: OS21B-1224    [Abstracts]
TI: The South Carolina Coastal Erosion Study: Integrated Circulation and Sediment Transport Studies. A Project Overview.
AU: * Voulgaris, G
EM: gvoulgaris@geol.sc.edu
AF: Marine Science Program, Department of Geological Sciences University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 United States
AU: Warner, J C
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, Woods Hole Science Center, Woods Hole, MA 02543 United States
AU: Work, P A
AF: School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Tech Regional Engineering Program, Savannah, GA 31407 United States
AU: Hanes, D M
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, Pacific Science Center, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 United States
AU: Haas, K A
AF: School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Tech Regional Engineering Program, Savannah, GA 31407 United States
AB: The South Carolina Coastal Erosion Study (SCCES) is a cooperative research program funded by the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Geology Program and managed by the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium. The main objective of the study is to understand the factors and processes that control coastal sediment movement along the northern part of the South Carolina coast while at the same time advance our basic understanding of circulation, wave propagation and sediment transport processes. Earlier geological framework studies carried out by the same program provided detailed data on bathymetry, bottom sediment thickness and grain size distribution. They identified an extensive (10km long, 2km wide) sand body deposit located in the inner shelf that has potential use for beach nourishment. The main objectives are to: (1) identify the role of wind-driven circulation in controlling regional sediment distribution on the SC shelf; (2) examine the hypothesis that the shoal is of the "fair-weather type" with bedload being the dominant sediment transport mode and the tidally-averaged flow being at different directions at the two flanks of the shoal; (3) investigate the possibility that the sediment source for the shoal is derived from the nearshore as the result of the convergence of the longshore sediment transport; and finally, (4) quantify the control that the shoal exerts on the nearshore conditions through changes on the wave energy propagation characteristics. Field measurements and numerical modeling techniques are utilized in this project. Two deployments of oceanographic and sediment transport systems took place for a period of 6 months (October 2003 to April 2004) measuring wind forcing, vertical distribution of currents, stratification, and wave spectral characteristics. Further, bed-flow interactions were measured at two locations, with instrumented tripods equipped with pairs of ADVs for measuring turbulence, PC-ADPs for measuring vertical current profiles in the near bed and OBS and ABS for measuring suspended sediment concentrations. The numerical modeling effort utilizes ROMS for 3-D coastal circulation, SWAN for wave propagation on the inner shelf, and SHORECIRC for circulation in the nearshore. As part of the nearshore component of this project a focused short-term surf zone experiment was also carried out.
DE: 4219 Continental shelf processes
DE: 4294 Instruments and techniques
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting