Flood Roger D.

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Flood
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Roger D.
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  • Preprint
    The impact of Hurricane Sandy on the shoreface and inner shelf of Fire Island, New York : large bedform migration but limited erosion
    ( 2015-03) Goff, John A. ; Flood, Roger D. ; Austin, James A. ; Schwab, William C. ; Christensen, Beth ; Browne, Cassandra M. ; Denny, Jane F. ; Baldwin, Wayne E.
    We investigate the impact of superstorm Sandy on the lower shoreface and inner shelf offshore the barrier island system of Fire Island, NY using before-and-after surveys involving swath bathymetry, backscatter and CHIRP acoustic reflection data. As sea level rises over the long term, the shoreface and inner shelf are eroded as barrier islands migrate landward; large storms like Sandy are thought to be a primary driver of this largely evolutionary process. The “before” data were collected in 2011 by the U.S. Geological Survey as part of a long-term investigation of the Fire Island barrier system. The “after” data were collected in January, 2013, ~two months after the storm. Surprisingly, no widespread erosional event was observed. Rather, the primary impact of Sandy on the shoreface and inner shelf was to force migration of major bedforms (sand ridges and sorted bedforms) 10’s of meters WSW alongshore, decreasing in migration distance with increasing water depth. Although greater in rate, this migratory behavior is no different than observations made over the 15-year span prior to the 2011 survey. Stratigraphic observations of buried, offshore-thinning fluvial channels indicate that long-term erosion of older sediments is focused in water depths ranging from the base of the shoreface (~13-16 m) to ~21 m on the inner shelf, which is coincident with the range of depth over which sand ridges and sorted bedforms migrated in response to Sandy. We hypothesize that bedform migration regulates erosion over these water depths and controls the formation of a widely observed transgressive ravinement; focusing erosion of older material occurs at the base of the stoss (upcurrent) flank of the bedforms. Secondary storm impacts include the formation of ephemeral hummocky bedforms and the deposition of a mud event layer.
  • Thesis
    Studies of deep-sea sedimentary microtopography in the North Atlantic Ocean
    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1978-01) Flood, Roger D.
    Many of the small-scale topographic features (dimensions of centimeters to kilometers) found on the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge (western North Atiantic, water depth greater than 4000 m) and in the Rockall Trough (northeastern North Atlantic, water depth greater than 2000 m) have been formed as bed forms of deep currents. These bed forms, all developed in cohesive sediments, include current ripples (spacings of tens of centimeters, formed transverse to the flow), longitudinal triangular ripples (spacings of meters, formed in sandy muds and parallel to the flow), furrows (spacings of tens to 100's of meters, formed parallel to the flow and presently either erosional or depositional), and regular sediment waves (spacings of a few kilometers, now found oblique to the flow and migrating either upstream or downstream). The local distribution of any given bed form is influenced by the presence of larger features. Bed forms are often found in zones which strike parallel to the regional contours. Debris flows, affecting areas of 1000's to 10,000's of square kilometers, are also present in these areas. A debris flow studied in the Rockall Trough is erosional at its shallowest depths and depositional at greater depths. Gravitational flows strike perpendicular to the contours. Pockmarks (tens of meters in diameter, marking fluid seeps) are also found on the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge. The larger topographic features (greater than several meters) with steep slopes (greater than about 20°) can be observed on surface echo-sounding profiles either as fields of regular hyperbolic echoes (e.g., echoes from regularly spaced furrows), fields of irregularly spaced, dissimilar hyperbolae (e.g., echoes from blocks, ridges, and folds in debris flows), or as regular features whose structure is often obscured by side echoes (e.g., echoes from sediment waves). Although near-bottom investigations are required to describe the features, the nature of the sea floor can often be inferred from the character of the echo-sounding profile. Similar echo-sounding records in different areas of the ocean indicate the presence of similar sea-floor features. The morphology of the bed forms studied and the current and temperature structure of the overlying water column lead to conclusions about bed form origin and present-day interactions with deep currents. Furrows form as erosional bed forms during high-velocity (>20? cm/sec) current events by large, helical secondary circulations in the bottom boundary layer. Once formed, furrows may develop into depositional features, or they may continue as erosional ones, depending on the local currents and the sediment supply. Large, regular sediment waves may be formed at current speeds of 5 to 10 cm/sec by lee waves generated by topographic irregularities on the sea floor, such as submarine canyons, or by instabilities in the flow of deep, contour-following currents. Sediment waves develop where there is an abundant supply of sediment and steady mean currents. Waves appear to migrate upstream where tidal current fluctuations are smaller than the mean velocity, and downstream where they are larger. Near-bottom currents appear to be faster on the downstream side of upstream-migrating sediment waves than on their upstream side. The resulting variations in bed shear stress lead to higher sedimentation rates on the upstream side and bed form migration in that direction.