The extensive coastal wetlands in Mississippi River Delta represent the seventh largest deltaic floodplain in the world, contributing to many services that sustain the economies of the region. Subsidence, sea level rise, saltwater intrusion, wave action from storms, and sediment depletion have contributed to chronic wetland losses, converting vegetated lands into open waters and increasing wind fetch. Among these factors listed, wave energy plays the largest role in marsh edge erosion in an open bay environment. Degrading barrier islands along the shoreline of this delta allow swell energy to enter protected bay areas, contributing to marsh edge erosion. Locally generated wind waves within enlarged bays also contribute to wetland loss. Quantifying the roles of swell and wind waves in marsh edge erosion is essential to any ecosystem restoration design. In this study, a numerical model is implemented to describe the wave climate of combined swell and wind waves in a deltaic estuary. Terrebonne Bay was chosen as the study area because it has experienced one of the largest reductions in barrier islands and wetland loss rates among Louisiana estuaries. A continuous wave measurement in upper Terrebonne Bay was obtained over the course of a year. A spectral wave model is used to hindcast the wave climate in the estuary. The model results are compared against the in situ wave measurement. The wave power is partitioned into swell and wind sea at different locations in Terrebonne Bay using the model results. An extensive analysis on a valid effective wave power range that directly impacts the marsh edge is performed and presented. Insight into the temporal and spatial variability of wave power is gained. Through differentiating swell and wind sea energies around the bay, improvements of longterm wave power computation for shoreline retreat prediction are made. It is found that the swell energy becomes the primary driver of marsh edge retreat in the southwest part of Terrebonne Bay as the barrier islands are degrading.
Recent attempts to relate marsh edge retreat rate to wave power have met varying levels of success. Schwimmer (2001) correlated wave power to marsh boundary retreat rates over a five-year period along sites within Rehoboth Bay, Delaware, USA. Marani et al. (2011) derived a linear relationship between volumetric retreat rate and mean wave power density using Buckingham’s theorem of dimensional analysis. Leonardi and Fagherazzi (2015) added an exponential function to the Schwimmer (2001) equation to account for variability in soil resistance and mean wave height. These equations factor in soil type, water elevation, vegetation, and macrofauna through field-calibrated empirical constants, i.e., they are not explicitly considered. Consequently, the existing capability of predicting marsh edge erosion rate as a function of wave power and soil and vegetation properties is rather limited for engineering applications. For instance, Allison et al. (2017) show that without taking the marsh platform, soil, and vegetation into account, the relationships between marsh edge erosion rates and wave power on a basin or coastal-wide scale are not strong enough statistically to serve as a useful predictive model. The objective of this study is to develop a more robust marsh edge erosion model by characterizing the shear strength, wave power, and retreat rates in Terrebonne Bay, Louisiana.
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