For more than a century, studies of sedimentology and sediment transport have measured bed-sediment grain size by collecting samples and transporting them back to the laboratory for grain-size analysis. This process is slow and expensive. Moreover, most sampling systems are not selective enough to sample only the surficial grains that interact with the flow; samples typically include sediment from at least a few centimeters beneath the bed surface. New hardware and software are available for in situ measurement of grain size. The new technology permits rapid measurement of surficial bed sediment. Here we describe several systems we have deployed by boat, by hand, and by tripod in rivers, oceans, and on beaches. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Sediment derived from impaired watersheds is a major stressor to adjacent coral reefs globally. To better understand stresses generated by specific processes and events, many coral reef scientists seek to collect physical samples of settling particles and obtain reproducible information about net rates of sediment accumulation on coral reefs. Yet, the tools most commonly used to gather this information, sediment tube traps, only provide information on the gross accumulation of sediment at a site, in that all particles are effectively trapped within the container, unlike what a coral surface experiences. To address the need for an improved measurement of net particle accumulation on coral surfaces, we propose using recoverable sediment pods (SedPods) that can be constructed from readily available materials for under US $20. These devices are inexpensive, easy to fabricate, and allow for capture of particles over a given time span. The particles can then be used for laboratory analysis and accurate calculation of net accumulation rates on a coral surface proxy. In an experiment in Hanalei Bay, HI, we found that net sediment accumulation on rectangular SedPods was an order of magnitude less than gross accumulation in nearby conventional tube traps.
Variation in nearshore bed-sediment grain sizeNearshore sediment transport determines the fate of seabed nutrients, contaminants, and pathogens; asserts control on the seabed and water column as habitats; and drives changes in seafloor topography which, in turn, affect wave transformation processes, spatial gradients in energy dissipation, and nearshore hydrodynamic circulation patterns. Relatively small changes in grain size have been shown to change the sign (depositional or erosional) of nearshore net sand transport rates (Ribberink and Chen 1993); affect the vertical grain-size distribution in suspension (McFetridge and Nielsen 1985); and the shape of suspended sediment concentration profiles (Conley et al. 2008). Laboratory experiments with graded beds simulating very high energy sheet-flow conditions show preferential transport of the coarse fractions in the mixture (e.g., van der Werf et al. 2006), and that the transport of each sizefraction is strongly influenced by the presence of other fractions (e.g., Wilcock 1988).Model calculations of suspended-sediment flux have been shown to become highly inaccurate within hours if the effects of variable bed-sediment grain-size are ignored, because waves and currents can modify the spatial distribution of seabed sediments in a variety of shelf settings over this time-scale (Harris and Wiberg 2002). However, advances in modeling grainsize sorting (spatial segregation) and its underlying selective transport mechanisms are hampered by few observations at sufficient coverage/frequency with which to compare theory. The result is that most nearshore (e.g., Bailard 1981; Larson and Kraus 1995) and regional shelf (e.g., Harris and Coleman 1998;Zhang et al. 1999;Cookman and Flemings 2001) models tend to oversimplify grain-size distribution effects on sediment transport because detailed observations of the behavior of a mixture of size fractions is lacking.A more complete understanding of the role of grain size in the physics of sediment transport requires the collection of grain-size data with more temporal and spatial coverage, and AbstractWe describe a remotely operated video microscope system, designed to provide high-resolution images of seabed sediments. Two versions were developed, which differ in how they raise the camera from the seabed. The first used hydraulics and the second used the energy associated with wave orbital motion. Images were analyzed using automated frequency-domain methods, which following a rigorous partially supervised quality control procedure, yielded estimates to within 20% of the true size as determined by on-screen manual measurements of grains. Long-term grain-size variability at a sandy inner shelf site offshore of Santa Cruz, California, USA, was investigated using the hydraulic system. Eighteen months of high frequency (min to h), high-resolution (μm) images were collected, and grain size distributions compiled. The data constitutes the longest known high-frequency record of seabed-grain size at this sample frequency, at any location....
For more than a century, studies of sedimentology and sediment transport have measured bed-sediment grain size by collecting samples and transporting them back to the lab for grainsize analysis. This process is slow and expensive. Moreover, most sampling systems are not selective enough to sample only the surficial grains that interact with the flow; samples typically include sediment from at least a few centimeters beneath the bed surface. New hardware and software are available for in-situ measurement of grain size. The new technology permits rapid measurement of surficial bed sediment. Here we describe several systems we have deployed by boat, by hand, and by tripod in rivers, oceans, and on beaches.
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