Hurricane impacts on turbidity and sediment in the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Florida, USA

The resuspension and transportation of sediments affect the nutrient or contaminants cycles in water column. Therefore, hurricane-induced sediment resuspension in coastal waters may cause environment impacts on coastal ecosystems. In this study, field observed data during a hurricane event from the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (Rookery Bay NERR), Florida, were studied. Based on the relationship between sediment and turbidity, variations of turbidity in the Rookery Bay NERR were discussed in this paper under the impact of the Hurricane Isaac in 2012. Time series analysis indicates that Hurricane Isaac causes the substantial increase of turbidity. Traditional direct regression analysis with raw data was found to result in poor correlation (R2<0.41) between wind speed and turbidity due to the impacts of multi-factors in coastal waters of study region during hurricane. Then Hanning Filter was used to remove tidal effect, which shows some improvement of correlations (R2>0.6) between wind speed and turbidity. Further improvement was made by introducing a phase factor to account for the lag time between the peak turbidity and peak wind speed, which lead to further improvement of the regression equation between wind speed and turbidity. By using Hanning Filter and phase factor, the regression equation between turbidity and wind speed fits well with observations (R2>0.96). Different lag time between wind speed and turbidity at different locations illustrated that wind had different effects on turbidity due to the locations and water depth. Based on the approximate empirical relationship between turbidity and sediment concentration, a regression equation between wind speed and sediment concentration was derived approximately. The equation could be applied to approximately estimate the sediment concentration using wind speed during hurricane, especially with the strong wind speed above 4 m/s. It can be used to provide technical supports for sediment assessment and coastal zone research under extreme clime in the study region.