Where river and tide meet: The morphodynamic equilibrium of alluvial estuaries

Abstract

We investigate the morphodynamic equilibrium of tidally dominated alluvial estuaries, extending previous works concerning the purely tidal case and the combined tidal-fluvial case with a small tidal forcing. We relax the latter assumption and seek the equilibrium bed profile of the estuary, for a given planform configuration with various degrees of funneling, solving numerically the 1-D governing equation. The results show that with steady fluvial and tidal forcings, an equilibrium bed profile of estuaries exists. In the case of constant width estuaries, a concave down equilibrium profile develops through most of the estuary. Increasing the amplitude of the tidal oscillation, progressively higher bed slopes are experienced at the mouth while the river-dominated portion of the estuary experiences an increasing bed degradation. The fluvial-marine transition is identified by a “tidal length” that increases monotonically as the river discharge and the corresponding sediment supply are increased while the river attains a new morphological equilibrium configuration. Tidal length also increases if, for a fixed river discharge and tidal amplitude, the sediment flux is progressively reduced with respect to the transport capacity. In the case of funnel-shaped estuaries the tidal length strongly decreases, aggradation is triggered by channel widening, and tidal effects are such to enhance the slope at the inlet and the net degradation of the river bed. Finally, results suggest that alluvial estuaries in morphological equilibrium cannot experience any amplification of the tidal wave propagating landward. Hence, hypersynchronous alluvial estuaries cannot be in equilibrium.