''It's important that you work on things that you care about and do a good job and not be too worried about consequences. Don't be afraid to get involved.'' Walter Munk
Carolina Beach Yacht Basin Flooding & Flushing
Coastal communities are increasingly impacted by tidal driven and compound flooding. In some cases, flood waters are contaminated with pollutants (like fecal indicator bacteria) at levels well above EPA recommended levels for recreational waters. This has been the case in Carolina Beach, where King-Tide (highest astronomical tides) induce localized flooding (for more, check out: The Sunny Day Flooding Project ). Unfortunately, little is known about the sources of fecal contamination and the fate of contaminated floodwaters as they receed. We're working with PI-Natalie Nelson and co-PIs Angela Harris & Katherine Anarde at NCSU to determine microbial risks of floodwaters and impacts of receeding floodwaters on adjoining recreational waters. Ben Middour, a graduate student researcher in the UNCW-CMS Marine Science Masters program, is working to determine the fate of floodwaters that discharge into the Carolina Beach Yacht Basin using a combination of moored current profiles, custom built drifters, and mobile hydrographic surveys. Ben's low-cost cellular-enabled GPS-drifters upload positions every five minutes, allowing us to track them in near-realtime. The latest distribution is shown below:
Inner-Shelf Dynamics Experiment
A multi-instutution research project funded by the Office of Naval Research focused on understanding the complex interplay of winds, waves, stratification and complex bathymetry on inner-shelf oceanography.
Experiment Site
BAMS-article
Data Repository