ASA 127th Meeting M.I.T. 1994 June 6-10

1aAO6. Coastal sediment transport monitoring using high-frequency acoustics in the 1990--91 STRESS II experiment.

James Lynch

James Irish

Arthur Newhall

Woods Hole Oceanogr. Inst., Woods Hole, MA 02543

The bottom sediments of many coastal areas are contaminated by a truly awesome witches brew of ingredients (PCB's, heavy metals, radioactive wastes, to name a few). The eventual fate of these contaminants is intimately tied in with the processes of coastal sediment transport. In recent years, acoustical remote sensing has become a powerful tool in measuring the process involved in coastal and deep sea sediment transport. In this talk, acoustical measurements made as part of a major experiment to understand the processes governing transport on the continental shelves, the ``Sediment Transport on Shelves and Slopes'' (STRESS) experiments will be discussed. Of particular interest here are the acoustical images of the near-bottom boundary layer, and their implications for sediment transport modeling. [Work supported by ONR.]