Funds will also sponsor the execution of complementary science fair projects by Forest Hill High School environmental science magnet program students, which will focus on using a rapid-assessment optical technique for developing an organic matter mixing model across a ridge/slough transect (which can be used as a validation measure for the sediment transport model) and on elucidating the effects of ambient water quality on flocculent organic sediment transport properties.
FOREST HILL HIGH SCHOOL WEST PALM BEACH ISCRIBE SERIES
To this end, flow monitoring and a series of transport experiments and tracer tests using natural floc will be performed in laboratory and field flumes. Experimental analysis of floc transport mechanics will describe the critical shear stresses and turbulence intensities that entrain size classes of floc in a deposited bed, equilibrium aggregate size distributions and concentrations resulting from flow with different shear parameters, aggregate settling velocities, and changes in turbulence and flow profiles that occur across a ridge/slough cross-section as a result of vegetation and microtopography. Project hypotheses will be tested through a combination of field and laboratory experimentation and numerical modeling of the mass and momentum balance equations governing flocculent sediment transport dynamics and flow in vegetated environments. Namely, under historical flow conditions, it is hypothesized that sediment redistribution from open-water slough to vegetated ridge regulated ridge width but that, with drainage and compartmentalization of the Everglades, the magnitude of redistribution has decreased, permitting expansion of ridges into open-water sloughs and loss of topographic heterogeneity. The proposed research tests the hypothesis that sediment transport dynamics play a role in controlling the topographic patterning that is crucial to the ecology of the ridge and slough landscape in the Florida Everglades. Primary Place of Performance Congressional District: Judson Harvey (Principal Investigator) Sponsored Research Office:.
Thomas Torgersen EAR Division of Earth Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences Collaborative Research: The Role of Flocculent Organic Sediment Transport as a Feedback Mechanism that Controls Landscape Dynamics and Restoration Success in the Everglades NSF Org:
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