Author(s): Bahram Khazaei, Hector Bravo, Eric Anderson, Jeffrey Val Klump

Linked Author(s): Hector Bravo, Eric Anderson

Keywords: Green Bay; Fox River; Sediment; FVCOM; Fate and transport;

Abstract: Lower Green bay is a USEPA area of concern because of environmental- and health-related problems that include poor water quality, harmful algal blooms, and altered habitats. The main source of those problems is contaminated and nutrient-rich sediments that are transported into the bay by rivers, especially the Fox River. Shallow depth, as well as morphological and physical characteristics of the bay have produced mixing conditions that result in inefficient transport of sediments out of the bay. Understanding the sediment transport in Green Bay is therefore important in developing restoration and management plans, while progress in that understanding is challenged by hydrodynamic modeling complexities and limitations. In this study, a sediment transport model was developed based on the Finite-Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM) to overcome challenges faced in previous modeling efforts. FVCOM is equipped with surface wave, sediment transport, water quality, and biological modules that provide the opportunity to model sediment transport in the bay on a single platform. Moreover, FVCOM can improve computational efficiency by running in parallel mode, and is based on unstructured grids that facilitate the development of a single model for the bay and the whole-lake, thus avoiding open-boundary issues associated with nested models. This model will be used to investigate the regimes of sediment transport in Green Bay and to identify major sedimentation zones. The sediment model can help to improve our knowledge about the contribution of tributaries, particularly the Fox River, to the water quality in Green Bay, and sediment fluxes into Lake Michigan.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/38WC092019-1680

Year: 2019