Collaborative Research: Morphodynamic simulations of coastal storms and overwash to characterize back-barrier lake stratigraphies

合作研究：沿海风暴和洪水的形态动力学模拟，以表征后障壁湖地层

• 批准号: 2052656
• 负责人: Jeffrey Donnelly
• 金额: $ 23.75万
• 依托单位: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-05-01 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2052656&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Morphodynamic; simulations; coastal

Hurricanes constitute major hazards to coastal communities of the eastern United States, generating strong winds and waves, coastal flooding, and erosion. These storms often induce overwash, a process where water and sediments flow over coastal barriers, erode the beach, and deposit sediments atop and behind the barrier. Geoscientists often use deposits of overwash in coastal ponds to infer when hurricanes occurred in the past, prior to written and satellite records of hurricanes. These sedimentary records of past hurricane activity are useful for constraining the probability of a hurricane making landfall on a stretch of coastline, or for understanding changes in hurricane frequency in response to past changes in climate, and are commonly integrated into hazard assessments. However, these sedimentary records are limited to reconstructing the frequency of past storms, while inferences into the magnitude or track of these events remain preliminary. In this project, the investigators will harness recent advances in computer simulations of coastal sediment transport to develop a new approach for reconstructing storm strength and track from overwash deposits. This project will integrate field-based observations of overwash from sediment cores with state-of-the-art simulations of observed and simulated hurricanes to: (i) evaluate the influences of storm properties on overwash deposition in back-barrier settings, (ii) diagnose the sensitivity of depositional patterns to geomorphic change, and (iii) relate storm strength and track to the properties of overwash deposits. Our This work will deliver quantitative reconstructions of hurricane magnitude for southern New England — a heavily-populated region that is vulnerable to tropical cyclones — extending the historical record of hurricane activity in this region back centuries to provide insight into strengths and tracks of prehistoric hurricanes that made landfall in this region. The investigators anticipate that the integrative and scalable approach developed here will be applicable to other coastlines in the United States and abroad that are vulnerable to tropical and extratropical cyclones, and will facilitate the critical challenge of predicting and mitigating against coastal erosion and flooding.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

飓风对美国东部沿海社区构成重大危害，产生强风和巨浪、沿海洪水和侵蚀。这些风暴经常引发过度冲刷，水和沉积物流过海岸屏障，侵蚀海滩并在顶部沉积沉积物。在飓风的书面记录和卫星记录之前，地球科学家经常使用沿海池塘中的过度冲刷沉积物来推断飓风发生的时间。飓风在一段海岸线上登陆，或者了解飓风频率因过去气候变化而发生的变化，并且通常被纳入灾害评估中。然而，这些沉积记录仅限于重建过去风暴的频率，而无法进行推断。在该项目中，研究人员将利用沿海沉积物输送的计算机模拟的最新进展，开发一种根据洪水沉积物重建风暴强度和轨迹的新方法。沉积物过度冲刷的观察对观测到的和模拟的飓风进行最先进的模拟的核心，以：（i）评估风暴特性对后屏障环境中过度沉积的影响，（ii）诊断沉积模式对地貌变化的敏感性，以及（ iii) 将风暴强度和轨迹与过度沉积物的特性联系起来，我们的这项工作将定量重建新英格兰南部（一个容易受到热带气旋影响的人口稠密地区）的飓风强度，从而扩展该地区飓风活动的历史记录。几个世纪前的地区深入了解在该地区登陆的史前飓风的强度和轨迹研究人员预计，这里开发的综合和可扩展的方法将适用于美国和国外易受热带和温带气旋影响的其他海岸线。将促进预测和减轻海岸侵蚀和洪水的关键挑战。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。