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.
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