Abstract
Over the past several decades, estuaries have earned a reputation as sediment sinks through the theoretical and empirical works of many scientists (e.g. Postma, 1967; Pritchard, 1967; Meade, 1969, 1972, 1982; Biggs, 1970; Biggs and Howell, 1984; Schubel, 1984; Knebel, 1989; Dalrymple et al., 1990). These studies have documented the combined roles of sediment influx rates, sea-level rise, climate, and estuarine circulation as the dominant controls on estuarine infilling (Schubel, 1984). However, aspects of most of these models (e.g. distance-velocity asymmetry and settling lag and scour lag) only consider the movement of fine-grained sediments (<100 µm) capable of suspension or transport-limited systems in which estuarine sediment supply is greater than the transport capacity (Milliman and Meade, 1983). Much less is known about the dynamics (i.e. estuarine processes and time scales responsible for sediment fluxes) within fluvial-estuarine transition zones with respect to bedload sediment transport (Milliman and Meade, 1983)
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Fenster, M.S., FitzGerald, D.M., Belknap, D.F., Knisley, B.A., Gontz, A., Buynevich, I.V. (2005). Controls on Estuarine Sediment Dynamics in Merrymeeting Bay, Kennebec River Estuary, Maine, U.S.A.. In: FitzGerald, D.M., Knight, J. (eds) High Resolution Morphodynamics and Sedimentary Evolution of Estuaries. Coastal Systems and Continental Margins, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3296-X_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3296-X_9
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