Trapping and episodic flushing of suspended sediment from a tidal river

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that tidal forcing can be as important as gravitational circulation in maintaining an estuarine turbidity maximum (ETM). It is further postulated that a long-term mass balance between the import and export of sediment in an estuary may require episodic large river discharges or ‘freshets’ to flush sediment out of the ETM towards the open sea. In this study, we use a 2-month data set from a mooring in a tidal river that drains into a large drowned-river-valley estuary (Kaipara Harbour, New Zealand) to investigate interactions between tidal-current asymmetry and gravitational circulation. During baseflow river discharge and on spring tides, suspended-sediment transport was directed up-channel (landwards), driven by tidal pumping due to tidal-current asymmetry. During neap tides, the suspended-sediment flux was approximately zero. The data suggest that the bed was not locally erodible and that bed sediments at the site were being supplied by an ETM. The ETM only migrated far enough down channel to be observed at the mooring site during spring tides when the tidal excursion was longer. Suspended sediments were effectively trapped and recycled within the ETM. During and after two freshets, high river discharge displaced saline water from the tidal river, water-column stratification strengthened and the surface and bed current speeds increased. As a result, the advective component of the down-channel directed suspended-sediment flux increased. This provided a transport pathway for sediment out of the otherwise tidally pumped, flood-dominant system. We conclude that largest export of sediments out of the tidal river would potentially occur when a large freshet coincides with an apogean spring tide.