Calibration and Verification of a Hydrodynamic Model for a Narrow Estuary Receiving Submarine Groundwater Discharges

This paper presents calibration and verification of the laterally averaged model for estuaries (LAMFE) for the Chassahowitzka River, a spring-fed estuary located on the Gulf coast of central Florida, USA. The river is a narrow and complex riverine system that receives submarine groundwater discharge...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of marine science and engineering Vol. 10; no. 6; p. 808
Main Author Chen, XinJian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2022
Subjects
Calibration
Chassahowitzka River
Coasts
Discharge
Estuaries
Estuarine dynamics
Fluid mechanics
Groundwater
Groundwater discharge
Hydrodynamics
LAMFE model
model calibration and verification
narrow and braided rivers
Real time
Rivers
Salinity
Salinity effects
Simulation
spring-fed estuary
submarine groundwater discharge
Time measurement
Verification
Water levels
Watersheds
Crystal River
Florida
United States > US
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Summary:This paper presents calibration and verification of the laterally averaged model for estuaries (LAMFE) for the Chassahowitzka River, a spring-fed estuary located on the Gulf coast of central Florida, USA. The river is a narrow and complex riverine system that receives submarine groundwater discharges (SGDs), which are difficult to measure. This study tried to make a reasonable estimate of some unquantified or missing SGD data with a trial-and-error approach in the model calibration process. The model was successfully calibrated against measured real-time data of water level, salinity, and temperature at three locations within the simulation domain from November 2012 to December 2015, before it was verified for the period from January 2016 to March 2017. Skill assessment of the model performance included visual comparisons and statistical quantifications of the difference between measured real-time data and model results. Both have shown that the LAMFE model performs well in simulating hydrodynamics, salinity transport, and thermal dynamics in the estuary. The good agreement of model results with field data suggests that the estimation of unquantified or missing SGDs in the spring-fed estuary is reasonable.
ISSN:2077-1312
2077-1312
DOI:10.3390/jmse10060808