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Response Characteristics of the Perdido and Wolf Bay System to Inflows and Sea Level Rise

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Response Characteristics of the Perdido and Wolf Bay System to Inflows and Sea Level Rise British Journal of Environment & Climate Change 3(2): 229-256, 2013 SCIENCEDOMAIN international www.sciencedomain.org Response Characteristics of the Perdido and Wolf Bay System to Inflows and Sea Level Rise Janesh Devkota1, Xing Fang1* and Victoria Z. Fang2 1Department of Civil Engineering, Auburn University, Alabama 36849, USA. 2Auburn High School, 405 South Dean Road, Auburn, Alabama 36830, USA. Authors’ contributions Authors collaborated together for the completion of this work. Author JD designed the study, developed and calibrated the Perdido EFDC model, ran the model for all cases, performed data analyses of model results and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Author XF provided valuable instructions on study design, supervised the data analyses, and reviewed and revised the manuscript. Author VZF contributed by revising and improving the manuscript and interpreting model results due to the sea level rise. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Received 1st March 2013 st Research Article Accepted 1 June 2013 Published 20th August 2013 ABSTRACT The Perdido and Wolf Bay system in Alabama, USA, is an estuarine system linking the freshwater from the Perdido and Wolf Bay watersheds and the tidal saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico through Perdido Pass, Dolphin Pass, and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. A three dimensional hydrodynamic model using Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code (EFDC) was developed and used to analyze complex and dynamic flow, salinity, and temperature distributions in the system. The external driving forces for the model include the river discharges from natural and urban watersheds, atmospheric winds, and astronomical tidal elevations at the open boundaries where flow exchange takes place. Simulated water surface elevation, temperature, and salinity were compared against the field data at several observation stations in 2008 and 2009 with good agreement (coefficient of determination R2 = 0.92 between the measured and the modeled water surface elevations). The calibrated EFDC model was used to examine responses of the system to high, mean, and low inflows from streams and the sea level rise in the open boundaries under climate change. The concept of the age of water was applied to understand pollutant transport in the system. The age of water reveals dynamic and ____________________________________________________________________________________________ *Corresponding author: Email: [email protected]; British Journal of Environment & Climate Change, 3(2): 229-256, 2013 complex interactions between tides from the Gulf of Mexico and inflows from the streams. The age of water is less than 20 days under the 2-year high inflows and up to 160 days under 7Q10 low inflows. Under mean inflow conditions, the age of the tracer released from Wolf Bay is 50–70 days in the lower Perdido Bay and larger than that in the upper Perdido Bay, indicating a strong interaction between tides and inflows, which results in recirculation of flow and pollutants. The age of water is projected to increase up to 60 days under estimated sea level rise scenarios. Keywords: Hydrodynamic model; age of water; inflow; sea level rise. 1. INTRODUCTION The principal external forcings that control estuarine processes are tides, winds, and freshwater inflows from upstream watersheds and surrounding rural/urban watersheds. The freshwater inflows produce a net seaward transport of nutrients and pollutants into an estuary, while the tides lead to periodic seaward and landward transport or exchange [1]. This periodic transport process affects the salinity in an estuary and the flushing time of pollutants in the estuary. Salinity in an estuary varies temporally with rising and falling tides and seasonal changes in sea level and ocean salinity. The estuarine salinity distribution is a result of the interplay among the buoyancy flux from riverine inflow, the advection by tides, the estuarine circulation, and the wind mixing [2]. Human activities such as urbanization can influence salinity distributions in an estuary by altering freshwater inflows through upstream hydraulic control structures, increasing urban runoff from impervious areas, and modifying the estuarine morphometry. Alteration of estuarine morphometry includes channel deepening, construction of coastal structures, etc. The Perdido Bay estuary has experienced channel deepening near the Perdido Pass (Fig. 1) for navigational purposes in the past, which could influence salinity distribution and the ecosystem in the Bay. Several studies have been conducted to understand hydrodynamics and salinity transport [1,3,4], sediment transport [5,6], and water quality [7,8] in estuaries under past climate conditions. Estuaries are the most productive systems in nature. The balance of fresh water and saline water in an estuary results in a productive ecosystem [3]. The transport of dissolved substances and suspended particles takes place during the interaction of riverine inflows and coastal tides. Phytoplankton growth and variations of nutrients in lakes or estuaries are connected to the discharge from upstream rivers and tributaries [9]. Harmful algal blooms found in coastal waters are caused by circulation, river inflows, and anthropogenic nutrient loadings, such as urbanization; algal blooms lead to eutrophication [10]. It is essential to find the travel time required for the dissolved substances, e.g. nutrients introduced from the inflow tributaries, to travel to a given location of an estuary. The travel time is useful for planning strategies for water-quality restoration of an estuary. In this paper, the age of water was used as a time scale parameter for understanding mass exchange and transport process in an estuary. The age of a water parcel is defined as the time elapsed since the water parcel under consideration departed from the region in which its age is defined to be zero [11,12]. The age determined in this study is the time elapsed since a dissolved substance was discharged into the upstream rivers of an estuary. 230 British Journal of Environment & Climate Change, 3(2): 229-256, 2013 Fig. 1. Geographical location of Wolf Bay and Perdido Bay showing the monitoring stations managed by Alabama Department of Environment Management (ADEM), Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Alabama Water Watch (AWW). GIWW stands for the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, and the two weather stations used are shown Several studies related to the age of water, flushing time, and residence time have been conducted to understand mixing and transport processes [9,12,13]. Flushing time, residence time, and age of water are three common transport timescales used to measure retention of water or scalar quantities. Pollutant residence time [14] for any pollutant with chemical/biological decay and settling is beyond the scope of the study. Flushing time of an estuary is commonly defined as the time needed to replace the freshwater already in the estuary (freshwater volume) at the rate of freshwater inflow [15]. It represents the average time required to remove a parcel of freshwater (or conservative tracer) from an upstream 231 British Journal of Environment & Climate Change, 3(2): 229-256, 2013 location in an estuary to the sea. Flushing time is used to describe the flushing rate or removal rate of pollutants in a waterbody without identifying the underlying physical processes or their spatial distribution. Residence time for a substance is the mean amount of time that particles of the substance or water parcels stay or “reside” in a system [14]. Zimmerman [11] defined residence time as the time required for the water parcel to reach to the outlet after arriving at a particular location in a waterbody for the first time. Age of water is the compliment of the residence time. Age of water is defined as the time interval between the entrance of a pollutant discharge into a waterbody and arrival at a location of interest within the waterbody. River inflow is one of the dominant factors that influences water age distribution [12]. Density-induced circulation substantially contributes to long-term transport in a downstream estuary, where stratification persists. Flushing time affects a wide range of hydrodynamic and water quality processes in an estuary [16]. Shen and Haas [9] developed and applied a three-dimensional numerical model for the York River estuary in order to calculate the age of water and residence time in the estuary. They reported that it took about 2 and 3 months for the dissolved substances discharged into the system at the headwaters of the tributaries to be transported to the mouth of the estuary under high and mean inflow conditions, respectively. Model studies were conducted to understand the salinity distribution as a result of the change in wind directions in the Perdido Bay and Wolf Bay estuary [17]. Xia et al. [18] studied the response of a Gulf of Mexico estuary plume to wind forcing using the particle tracking approach. The present study was conducted to support the overall objective of understanding the impacts of human activities and climate change on water resources and ecosystem health in the Wolf Bay basin. To understand the flow dynamics in Wolf Bay under extreme climate conditions such as flood and drought, sea level rise, and future climate changes a high spatial resolution three-dimensional hydrodynamic model was developed. Because there was not adequate data to quantify the flow exchange
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