secondary circulation in a region of flow curvature relationship with tidal forcing and river discharge 1 on the basis of a 301 day acoustic doppler current profiler mooring in an estuarine tidal strait the strength and structure of secondary circulation in a region of flow curvature is related to variations in tidal forcing and river discharge during low flow conditions the structure of secondary flow is consistent with a centrifugally forced helical flow with bottom flow toward the inside of the bend and surface flow toward the outside of the bend the strength of secondary flow increases linearly with tidal range and is consistent with a vertical eddy viscosity that is linearly dependent on tidal current speed during times of high river discharge the strength of secondary flow is significantly reduced and its vertical structure undergoes a fundamental change over the spring neap cycle during spring tides the classic helical flow pattern is evident albeit weaker than during low flow conditions however during neap tides a more complex two cell structure is evident the change between these two states occurs with a spring neap transition in the subtidal flow indicating that it is also accompanied by changing stratification simple scaling analysis suggests that during weakly stratified conditions secondary circulation will influence stream wise dynamics and dispersion for channels with widths on order or less than 0 1 h cd where h is the water column depth and cd is a quadratic bottom drag coefficient in contrast during highly stratified conditions lateral excursions due to secondary flows are limited to approximately one tenth of the channel s width and are an ineffective lateral mixing agent

interaction of lateral baroclinic forcing and turbulence in an estuary 1 observations of density and velocity in a channel in northern san francisco bay show that the onset of vertical density stratification during flood tides is controlled by the balance between the cross channel baroclinic pressure gradient and vertical mixing due to turbulence profiles of velocity salinity temperature and suspended sediment concentration were measured in transects across suisun cutoff in northern san francisco bay on two days over the 12 5 hour tidal cycle during flood tides an axial density front developed between fresher water flowing from the shallows of grizzly bay into the northern side of suisun cutoff and saltier water flowing up the channel north of the front transverse currents were driven by the lateral salinity gradient with a top to bottom velocity difference greater than 30 cm s south of the front the secondary circulation was weak and along channel velocities were greater than to the north the gradient richardson number shows that stratification was stable north of the front while the water column was turbulently mixed south of the front time series measurements of velocity and salinity demonstrate that the front develops during each tidal cycle in estuaries longitudinal dynamics predict less stratification during flood than ebb tides these data show that stratification can develop during flood tides due to a lateral baroclinic pressure gradient in estuaries with complex bathymetry

lateral circulation in well mixed and stratified estuarine flows with curvature abstract a field experiment was conducted to examine stratified and unstratified curvature generated lateral circulation and momentum balances in an estuarine tidal channel conductivity temperature depth and current profiler data were collected vertically and laterally across the channel at a sharp bend over a fortnightly period to measure the terms of the lateral momentum budget well mixed conditions allow the development of classic two layer helical flow around a bend stratification strengthens curvature induced lateral circulation but the development of a lateral baroclinic pressure gradient opposes the resultant motions the spatial and temporal response of this baroclinic pressure gradient is different than centrifugal acceleration producing a three layer profile as the baroclinic term becomes stronger or as centrifugal acceleration disappears as the flow exits the bend two layer flow with the opposite direction from curvature occurs in both stratified and well mixed conditions downstre

longitudinal dispersion and lateral circulation in the intertidal zone 1 field observations indicate that a tidal salinity front that is regenerated each lower low water is a prominent feature of intertidal zone flow during wet winter months a strong longitudinal density gradient at the front influences flow dynamics through tidal straining and baroclinic forcing during each inundation period the salinity gradient disperses as it advects across the intertidal zone the average longitudinal dispersivity estimated from observations is about 10 m2 s 1 a three dimensional numerical model yields comparable estimates of tidally averaged dispersivity for an idealized bathymetry with a subtidal channel and intertidal shoals the instantaneous dispersivity through the tidal cycle depends on both vertical and lateral shear in along channel velocity dispersion due to vertical shear is greatest during stratified ebbs and inversely depends on tidal forcing dispersion due to lateral shear results from bathymetric variability between channel and shoal and increases with tidal amplitude similarly the along channel residual velocity is a combination of baroclinic and frictional processes frictional effects dominate the depth averaged residual such that net flow is upstream on the shoals and downstream in the channel however the frictional pattern is moderated by baroclinic forcing at the front although along channel dynamics dominate differential advection of the salinity front establishes lateral baroclinic circulation between channel and shoals lateral residual circulation is flood dominant with dense water moving out of channel near the bed and convergence from the shoals at the surface at times near the front the lateral salt flux can significantly affect the salinity budget in the channel

intratidal variations in stratification and mixing in the hudson estuary this study represents a detailed examination of intratidal variations in boundary layer structure in a relatively narrow straight section of the hudson river estuary during high river discharge the presence of active mixing is inferred from estimates of the richardson number the maximum height above bed to which mixing occurs is comparable during flood and ebb however the regions of mixing differ in density structure during the flood active mixing is confined to a well mixed near bed layer whereas during the ebb active mixing occurs throughout regions of significant stratification tidal straining maintains stratification during the ebb while it promotes the growth of a uniform bottom mixed layer during the flood in general maximum and minimum near bed stratification occur during late ebb and flood respectively reflecting the dominant role played by tidal straining in determining intratidal variation vertical stretching was also found to be an important term in the stratification balance during the ebb

reynolds stresses and secondary circulation in a stratified rotating shear flow abstract a transverse secondary circulation should result from vertical mixing of momentum in a stratified shear flow influenced by the earth s rotation a rigidly mounted acoustic doppler current profiler was deployed at the bottom of juan de fuca strait a stratified estuary on the west coast of north america for 21 days to examine this dynamical process and its variation over a spring neap tidal cycle the data demonstrate a significant fortnightly modulation of the estuarine exchange flow with stronger along channel flow less dynamic stability and much greater cross strait currents at neap tide than at spring tide reliable estimates of the reynolds stresses in the stratified shear flow away from boundaries were also obtained they were small except for several days around neap tide when they were associated with times of reduced richardson number these stresses are not related in any simple way such as with a smooth positive eddy viscosity to the shear of the mean flow but do have a pattern

secondary circulation in a highly stratified estuary observations from the hudson river estuary are presented to discuss the interaction between secondary flows and stratification in the vicinity of a headland during highly stratified conditions analysis of the cross stream momentum balance suggests that centrifugal accelerations are in near balance with the cross stream baroclincity results emphasize that the interaction between stratification and secondary flows can set up a cross stream internal seiche this results in a reduction and subsequent reversal of the secondary flows downstream of a headland simple scaling arguments suggest that the spin down time for tidally driven eddies is related to stratification

creation of residual flows in a partially stratified estuary the creation of residual flows in estuaries is examined using acoustic doppler current profiler data sets from northern san francisco bay the data sets are analyzed using principal component analysis to examine the temporal variability of the flows which create the residual circulation it is seen that in this periodically and partially stratified estuary the residual flows are created through a series of pulses with strong variability at the 24 hour timescale through the interaction of shear stratification and mixing this interaction is captured through the use of a dimensionless number the horizontal richardson number rix which is developed to examine the local balance between the stratifying and destratifying forces at the tidal timescale it is seen that rix is a valuable parameter in predicting the onset of the residual creating events with a threshold value of 3 on ebb tides this critical value is argued to be a threshold above which the stratification and shear flow create a feedback effect each further intensifying the other this feedback results in a highly variable exchange flow which creates the estuarine residual in intermittent pulses rather than as a steady flow although typically attributed to baroclinic forcing an argument is made that these pulses of residual creating exchange flow could be created by barotropic forcing in the presence of variable stratification which is asymmetric between flood and ebb tides this result poses a great challenge for turbulence modeling as the timing and magnitude of stratification and shear must be correctly simulated on the tidal timescale in order to reproduce the effects seen in the data sets presented

the dynamics of a partially mixed estuary measurements of velocity density and pressure gradient in the lower hudson river estuary were used to quantify the dominant terms in the momentum equation and to characterize their variations at tidal and spring neap timescales the vertical momentum flux assumed to be due mainly to turbulent shear stress was estimated indirectly based on the residual from the acceleration and pressure gradient terms the indirect estimates of stress compared favorably to bottom stress estimates using a quadratic drag law supporting the hypothesis that the tidal momentum equation involves a local balance between tidal acceleration pressure gradient and stress divergence estimates of eddy viscosity indicated that there was significant tidal asymmetry with flood tide values exceeding ebb values by a factor of 2 as a consequence of the asymmetry the vertical structure of the tidally averaged stress bore no resemblance to the tidally averaged shear in spite of the asymmetry of vertical mixing the tidally averaged estuarine circulation was found to depend simply on the intensity of bottom turbulence which could be parameterized by a rayleigh drag formulation based on the tidal velocity magnitude and the tidally averaged near bottom flow this seemingly paradoxical result indicates that the estuarine circulation can be modeled without detailed knowledge of the effective eddy viscosity only requiring an estimate of the bottom drag coefficient the tidal forcing conditions and the baroclinic pressure gradient a notable characteristic of this solution is an inverse dependence of the estuarine circulation on the amplitude of the tides

high resolution observations of the intensity of secondary circulation along a curved tidal channel 1 high horizontal resolution moving vessel acoustic doppler current profiler adcp observations of the spatial pattern of cross stream velocities in a curved tidal channel show radially outward surface velocities up to 10 cm s 1 which are maximum midchannel consistent with helical secondary flow in a vertical plane normal to the depth averaged velocity the 30 m cross and 150 m along channel resolution observations are from a 2700 m long section of a 350 m wide horizontally and vertically well mixed tidal channel with a radius of curvature 1 5 km the along channel resolution allows the intensity of the curvature induced secondary flow to be estimated from the linear correlation between the observed cross channel component of vertical shear and the shear estimated from the streamwise velocity and its varying curvature using an existing analytic model the two shears are highly correlated and the regression line slope demonstrates that the observed curvature induced secondary flow is 30 more intense than that predicted by the model for a typical bottom drag coefficient the secondary flow is 50 more intense than that predicted using the drag coefficient which best fits the streamwise velocity profile numerical solutions demonstrate that the intensity of the secondary flow is sensitive to small changes in the shape of the eddy viscosity profile hence intensity may be sensitive to the way turbulence is modeled lagged correlation of the observations showed that the secondary flow adapts to changes in curvature and primary flow over a 300 m length scale or 20 water depths consistent with the existing model and laboratory studies

axial convergence in a well mixed estuary abstract transverse secondary circulations involving surface convergence observed in a well mixed estuary in north wales are made visible by the collection of surface material along an axial line which extends continuously for many kilometres through the estuary the circulation and axial convergence however are seen only during the flood phase of the tide and no similar behaviour has been observed during the ebb phase convergent circulations in the estuary are associated with small but steady transverse density gradients in the cross section produced by non uniform advection of the longitudinal gradient through the channel a diagnostic model using measured mean distributions of cross sectional density indicates surface transverse velocities 0 1 ms 1 similar to those observed in the estuary the model further predicts appreciable transverse divergent currents at a fractional depth of 0 75 a prediction which has been tested in the estuary using a vertical array of accurately resolving current direction indicators

secondary currents in a curved stratified estuarine channel this paper presents a study of secondary circulation in a curved stratified channel in northern san francisco bay over a 12 5 hour tidal cycle secondary currents were strong at times varying by up to 35 cm s from top to bottom but relatively transient as the balance between centrifugal and lateral baroclinic forcing changed over time the short travel time around the bend did not allow a steady state balance to develop between centrifugal and lateral baroclinic forcing during the flood tide the confluence of two streams with different velocities produced a strong lateral gradient in streamwise velocity as a result lateral advection was a significant term in the streamwise momentum balance having the same order of magnitude as the barotropic and baroclinic pressure gradients and the frictional terms during the first part of the ebb secondary currents were induced by lateral baroclinic forcing the direction of the secondary circulation reversed later in the ebb as the baroclinic forcing became weaker than the centrifugal acceleration the gradient richardson number showed that stratification was stable over most of the tidal cycle decreasing the importance of friction and allowing secondary currents to persist

three dimensional tidal flow around headlands field measurements of tidal flow around a headland indicate secondary circulation induced by flow curvature the secondary flow defined to be the flow in the plane normal to the direction of the vertically averaged current is directed toward the headland near the bottom and seaward near the surface consistent with theoretical predictions the strength of the secondary flow varies from 5 to 15 of the streamwise flow it is strongest when the water column is stratified because of both the enhanced shear of the streamwise flow and the reduced frictional damping of the secondary flow the transverse exchange accomplished by the secondary flow significantly influences the structure of the streamwise flow causing a broadening of the transverse shear and changing the horizontal and vertical distributions of momentum it may also have a significant influence on horizontal dispersion in the vicinity of headlands

the importance of aspiration and channel curvature in producing strong vertical mixing over a sill on the basis of observations of the time dependent tidally forced flow over a long sill we find that aspiration and channel curvature set the flow structure and condition the flow to allow intense vertical mixing aspiration reduces the potential energy of the water column by thinning it while maintaining its density contrast channel curvature induces a cross channel circulation that can rapidly overturn a stratified flow eighteen along channel sections of density velocity and dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy were collected in and around the tacoma narrows of puget sound a site suspected of driving a strong vertical circulation in adjoining main basin rapid inflow to the narrows on flood from one channel of a triple junction reduces dynamic pressure allowing dense water from below sill depth to be uplifted or aspirated into the narrows we estimate water from below 150 m 3 times the sill depth is drawn into the narrows on a 3 m flood tide once in the narrows the flow remains stratified until it passes a 50 bend where a strong secondary circulation overturns the 50 m deep water column and generates intense turbulent mixing cross channel velocities of up to 0 4 m s 1 are observed and maximum values of exceed 10 3 w kg 1 upon leaving the sill stratification is reestablished and turbulence decays a similar set of sequences occurs on ebb except that the outflow bypasses the flood inflow channel and instead discharges into colvos passage the third branch of the triple junction colvos passage ultimately discharges the ebb effluent back into main basin enhancing the impact of mixing at the narrows by discharging the mixed product far from the source scaling of the cross channel momentum equation suggests that below a threshold value of along channel velocity stratification should suppress secondary circulation for a given vertical shear radius of curvature and channel width above the threshold velocity the magnitude of the cross channel velocity is roughly consistent with predictions for unstratified flow we estimate the maximum effective eddy diffusivity that aspiration and mixing in the narrows can produce in main basin to be 10 3 m2 s 1

convergence of lateral flow along a coastal plain estuary a set of velocity profiles obtained in the james river estuary with an acoustic doppler current profiler was used in combination with the results of an analytic tidal model to depict the appearance of surface lateral flow convergences v y during both flood and ebb stages of the tidal cycle the bathymetry of the estuary was characterized by a main channel and a secondary channel separated by relatively narrow shoals lateral surface flow convergences appeared over the edges of the channels and were produced by the phase lag of the flow in the channel relative to the shoals flood convergences developed in the late tidal stages and ebb convergences appeared soon after maximum currents most of these convergences caused fronts in the density field and flotsam lines that also appeared over the edges of the channel and that lasted 2 hours the transverse flows associated with the convergences were mostly in the same direction throughout the water column in fact the vertically averaged flow produced the same convergence patterns as those near the surface the analytic tidal model reproduced well the timing and location of the convergences as observed in the james river model results with different bathymetry emulated the results in other estuaries e g axial convergence in an estuary with a channel in the middle this work showed that the strength of lateral convergences along the estuary was proportional to the tidal amplitude and the channel steepness it also suggested that the convergences were produced mainly by the tidal flow interacting with the channel shoal bathymetry i e that they did not require the presence of density gradients however the analytic model underestimated the magnitude of the convergences and did not account for vertical circulations associated with fronts the formation of fronts resulted from the interaction of the tidal flow with the bathymetry and the density field

radioisotopic and biostratigraphic age relations in the coast range ophiolite northern california implications for the tectonic evolution of the western cordillera the coast range ophiolite cro in northern california includes two distinct remnants the elder creek ophiolite is a classic suprasubduction zone ophiolite with three sequential plutonic suites layered gabbro wehrlite pyroxenite quartz diorite a mafi c to felsic dike complex and mafi c felsic volcanic rocks the entire suite is cut by late mid oceanic ridge basalt morb dikes and overlain by ophiolitic breccia the stonyford volcanic complex sfvc comprises three volcanic series with intercalated chert horizons that form a submarine volcano enclosed in sheared serpentinite structurally below this seamount are melange blocks of cro similar to elder creek u pb zircon ages from plagiogranite and quartz diorites at elder creek range in age from 165 ma to 172 ma u pb zircon ages obtained from cro melange blocks below the sfvc are similar 166 172 ma 40 ar 39 ar ages of alkali basalt glass in the upper sfvc are all younger at 164 ma radiolarians extracted from chert lenses intercalated with basalt in the sfvc indicate that the sedimentary strata range in age from bathonian unitary association zone 6 6 of baumgartner et al 1995a near the base of the complex to late callovian to early kimmeridgian unitary association zones 8 10 in the upper part the sfvc sedimentary record preserves evidence of a major faunal change wherein relatively small sized polytaxic radiolarian faunas were replaced by very robust oligotaxic nassellarian dominated faunas that included praeparvicingula spp we suggest that cro formation began after the early middle jurassic 172 180 ma collision of an exotic or fringing arc with north america and initiation of a new or reconfi gured east dipping subduction zone the data show that the cro formed prior to the late jurassic nevadan orogeny probably by rapid forearc extension above a nascent subduction zone we infer that cro spreading ended with the collision of an oceanic spreading center ca 164 ma coincident with the oldest high grade blocks in the structurally underlying franciscan assemblage we further suggest that the classic nevadan orogeny represents a response to spreading center collision with shallow subduction of young lithosphere causing the initial compressional deformation and with a subsequent change in north american plate motion to rapid northward drift j2 cusp causing sinistral transpression and transtension in the sierra foothills these data are not consistent with models for late jurassic arc collision in the sierra foothills or a back arc origin for the cro

observations of turbulence in a partially stratified estuary the authors present a field study of estuarine turbulence in which profiles of reynolds stresses were directly measured using an adcp throughout a 25 h tidal day the dataset that is discussed quantifies turbulent mixing for a water column in northern san francisco bay that experiences a sequence of states that includes a weak ebb and flood that are stratified followed by a strong and eventually unstratified ebb and flood these measurements show that energetic turbulence is confined to a bottom mixed layer by the overlying stratification examination of individual reynolds stress profiles along with profiles of richardson number and turbulent froude number shows that the water column can be divided into regions based on the relative importance of buoyancy effects using the measured turbulence production rate p the dissipation rate e is estimated the observed turbulence had values of e nn 2 20 all of the time and e nn 2 200 most of the time suggesting that the observed motions were buoyancy affected turbulence rather than internal waves however at times turbulent froude numbers in much of the upper water column were less than one indicating important stratification effects taken as a whole the data show that stratification affects the turbulent velocity variance q2 most severely that is observed reductions in u9w9 are largely associated with small values of q2 rather than with a dramatic reduction in the efficiency with which turbulent motions produce momentum fluxes finally the dataset is compared to predictions made using the popular mellor yamada level 2 5 closure these comparisons show that the model tends to underestimate the turbulent kinetic energy in regions of strong stratification where the turbulence is strongly inhomogeneous and to overestimate the turbulent kinetic energy in weakly stratified regions the length scale does not appear to compensate for these errors and as a result similar errors are seen in the eddy viscosity predictions it is hypothesized that the underestimation of q2 is due to an inaccurate parameterization of turbulence self transport from the near bed region to the overlying stratification

tidally driven residual circulation in shallow estuaries with lateral depth variation tidally driven residual circulation in shallow estuaries with lateral depth variation has been studied analytically using a two dimensional depth averaged model the solution is presented for a v shaped channel exchange flow is found to be correlated with the topography the magnitude of this exchange flow depends mainly on four parameters the ratio between the minimum depth on the shoal and the maximum depth in the channel the ratio between the tidal amplitude at the mouth and the mean depth the ratio between the length of the estuary and the tidal wave length and the ratio between the tidal timescale and the decay timescale due to friction generally a net landward flow occurs over the shoals and is balanced by a return flow in the channel the along channel residual velocity changes nearly linearly across the estuary the residual velocity decreases monotonically toward the head of the estuary the transverse residual velocity is convergent in the channel and divergent on the shoals the residual velocity is highly dependent on the length of the estuary when the length of the estuary is much smaller than a quarter of the wave length the residual velocity is relatively small when the length of the estuary is about a quarter of the wave length the magnitude of the residual velocity reaches its maximum when the length of the estuary is much larger than a quarter of the wave length the residual circulation approaches the pattern found in an infinite length estuary on the basis of the analysis of the solution we conclude that exchange flow generated by tides in a shallow estuary is the result of competition among several processes an inward flux is caused by local nonlinearity both in the bottom friction and from propagation of the tidal wave of finite amplitude this inward flux is larger on the shoals and smaller in the channel owing to larger nonlinearity in the shallow water the residual inward flow creates a setup residual surface elevation of water at the head of the estuary that produces a pressure gradient this residual pressure gradient is approximately uniform across the estuary and drives an outward flow that is larger in the channel than on the shoals in all of the parameter space the competition results in a net inflow on the shoals and a net outflow in the channel

velocity redistribution in curved rectangular channels the main velocity redistribution in steady flow through curved conduits of shallow rectangular cross section is considered its mechanism is analysed using a mathematical model of steady incompressible laminar flow in coiled rectangular pipes the transverse transport of main flow momentum by the secondary circulation is shown to be the principal cause of this velocity redistribution the importance of the side wall regions even in shallow channels is assessed and the neglect of the influence of the side walls in the commonly applied simplified models of flow through shallow curved channels is shown to be strongly limiting in case of long bends with a rectangular cross section

tide induced variation of the dynamics of a salt wedge estuary abstract the time variations of the salt wedge intrusion in the fraser estuary british columbia were monitored during a variety of tidal and run off conditions using instruments and sampling methods that provided high resolution of the velocity and water properties in space and time the salt wedge was found to vary considerably in position and vertical structure through the tidal cycle due to the interaction of the tidal flow with the density driven motion of the salt wedge during the flood the salt wedge progressed up the estuary as a gravity current while during the ebb the salinity structure was eroded by shear instability the difference in character of the flow between flood and ebb is attributed to the transition between a subcritical and supercritical internal froude number during flood tide the internal state is subcritical and the estuarine shear flow is maintained with a small amount of vertical mixing while in the supercritical ebb flow vertical shears become so large that the pycnoc

modeling the lateral circulation in straight stratified estuaries the dynamics of lateral circulation in an idealized straight estuary under varying stratification conditions is investigated using a three dimensional hydrostatic primitive equation model in order to determine the importance of lateral circulation to the momentum budget within the estuary for all model runs lateral circulation is about 4 times as strong during flood tides as during ebbs this flood ebb asymmetry is due to a feedback between the lateral circulation and the along channel tidal currents as well as to time varying stratification over a tidal cycle as the stratification is increased the lateral circulation is significantly reduced because of the adverse pressure gradient set up by isopycnals being tilted by the lateral flow itself when rotation is included a timedependent cross channel ekman circulation is driven and the tidally averaged bottom lateral circulation is enhanced toward the right bank when looking toward the ocean in the northern hemisphere this asymmetry in the tidally averaged bottom lateral circulation may lead to asymmetric sediment transport leading to asymmetric channel profiles in straight estuaries for the weakly stratified model run advection due to lateral currents is a dominant term in both the along channel and cross channel momentum equations over a tidal cycle and for the tidally averaged momentum equations in the tidally averaged along channel momentum equation lateral advection acts as a driving term for the estuarine exchange flow and can be larger than the along channel pressure gradient therefore it should not be ignored when estimating momentum budgets in estuaries