Bedload Transport of Sediments and Morphodynamics in the Northern Gulf of California

Abstract

ABSTRACT Hernandez-Azcunaga, L.; Carbajal, N., and Montano-Ley, Y., 2014. Bedload transport of sediments and morphodynamics in the northern Gulf of California. Huge amounts of sediments have been supplied to the northern Gulf of California in recent geological time. Although water discharge and sediment supply have been suppressed from the Colorado River since about a century, satellite imagery reveals even now a persistently strong mobilization of sediments and the occurrence of marked sea bottom morphological features. To gain information on these processes, we applied a two-dimensional hydrodynamic numerical model to simulate bedload sediment transport caused by the dominant semidiurnal tidal component, M2, in the northern Gulf of California. The resulting transport of sediment encompasses areas of the Colorado River Delta, of the Adair and San Jorge bays, and of the southwestern sector of the study area. The model reproduces longitudinal and transversal bedforms observed in Adair Bay. The residual bed...