Holleman
Rusty C.
Holleman
Rusty C.
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ArticleA crab swarm at an ecological hotspot : patchiness and population density from AUV observations at a coastal, tropical seamount(PeerJ, 2016-04-12) Pineda, Jesus ; Cho, Walter W. ; Starczak, Victoria R. ; Govindarajan, Annette F. ; Guzman, Hector M. ; Girdhar, Yogesh ; Holleman, Rusty C. ; Churchill, James H. ; Singh, Hanumant ; Ralston, David K.A research cruise to Hannibal Bank, a seamount and an ecological hotspot in the coastal eastern tropical Pacific Ocean off Panama, explored the zonation, biodiversity, and the ecological processes that contribute to the seamount’s elevated biomass. Here we describe the spatial structure of a benthic anomuran red crab population, using submarine video and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) photographs. High density aggregations and a swarm of red crabs were associated with a dense turbid layer 4–10 m above the bottom. The high density aggregations were constrained to 355–385 m water depth over the Northwest flank of the seamount, although the crabs also occurred at lower densities in shallower waters (∼280 m) and in another location of the seamount. The crab aggregations occurred in hypoxic water, with oxygen levels of 0.04 ml/l. Barcoding of Hannibal red crabs, and pelagic red crabs sampled in a mass stranding event in 2015 at a beach in San Diego, California, USA, revealed that the Panamanian and the Californian crabs are likely the same species, Pleuroncodes planipes, and these findings represent an extension of the southern endrange of this species. Measurements along a 1.6 km transect revealed three high density aggregations, with the highest density up to 78 crabs/m2, and that the crabs were patchily distributed. Crab density peaked in the middle of the patch, a density structure similar to that of swarming insects.
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ArticleTurbulent and numerical mixing in a salt wedge estuary : dependence on grid resolution, bottom roughness, and turbulence closure(John Wiley & Sons, 2017-01-28) Ralston, David K. ; Cowles, Geoffrey W. ; Geyer, W. Rockwell ; Holleman, Rusty C.The Connecticut River is a tidal salt wedge estuary, where advection of sharp salinity gradients through channel constrictions and over steeply sloping bathymetry leads to spatially heterogeneous stratification and mixing. A 3-D unstructured grid finite-volume hydrodynamic model (FVCOM) was evaluated against shipboard and moored observations, and mixing by both the turbulent closure and numerical diffusion were calculated. Excessive numerical mixing in regions with strong velocities, sharp salinity gradients, and steep bathymetry reduced model skill for salinity. Model calibration was improved by optimizing both the bottom roughness (z0), based on comparison with the barotropic tidal propagation, and the mixing threshold in the turbulence closure (steady state Richardson number, Rist), based on comparison with salinity. Whereas a large body of evidence supports a value of Rist ∼ 0.25, model skill for salinity improved with Rist ∼ 0.1. With Rist = 0.25, numerical mixing contributed about 1/2 the total mixing, while with Rist = 0.10 it accounted for ∼2/3, but salinity structure was more accurately reproduced. The combined contributions of numerical and turbulent mixing were quantitatively consistent with high-resolution measurements of turbulent mixing. A coarser grid had increased numerical mixing, requiring further reductions in turbulent mixing and greater bed friction to optimize skill. The optimal Rist for the fine grid case was closer to 0.25 than for the coarse grid, suggesting that additional grid refinement might correspond with Rist approaching the theoretical limit. Numerical mixing is rarely assessed in realistic models, but comparisons with high-resolution observations in this study suggest it is an important factor.
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ArticleStratified turbulence and mixing efficiency in a salt wedge estuary(American Meteorological Society, 2016-05-24) Holleman, Rusty C. ; Geyer, W. Rockwell ; Ralston, David K.High-resolution observations of velocity, salinity, and turbulence quantities were collected in a salt wedge estuary to quantify the efficiency of stratified mixing in a high-energy environment. During the ebb tide, a midwater column layer of strong shear and stratification developed, exhibiting near-critical gradient Richardson numbers and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation rates greater than 10−4 m2 s−3, based on inertial subrange spectra. Collocated estimates of scalar variance dissipation from microconductivity sensors were used to estimate buoyancy flux and the flux Richardson number Rif. The majority of the samples were outside the boundary layer, based on the ratio of Ozmidov and boundary length scales, and had a mean Rif = 0.23 ± 0.01 (dissipation flux coefficient Γ = 0.30 ± 0.02) and a median gradient Richardson number Rig = 0.25. The boundary-influenced subset of the data had decreased efficiency, with Rif = 0.17 ± 0.02 (Γ = 0.20 ± 0.03) and median Rig = 0.16. The relationship between Rif and Rig was consistent with a turbulent Prandtl number of 1. Acoustic backscatter imagery revealed coherent braids in the mixing layer during the early ebb and a transition to more homogeneous turbulence in the midebb. A temporal trend in efficiency was also visible, with higher efficiency in the early ebb and lower efficiency in the late ebb when the bottom boundary layer had greater influence on the flow. These findings show that mixing efficiency of turbulence in a continuously forced, energetic, free shear layer can be significantly greater than the broadly cited upper bound from Osborn of 0.15–0.17.
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ArticleHydraulics and mixing in a laterally divergent channel of a highly stratified estuary(John Wiley & Sons, 2017-06-12) Geyer, W. Rockwell ; Ralston, David K. ; Holleman, Rusty C.Estuarine mixing is often intensified in regions where topographic forcing leads to hydraulic transitions. Observations in the salt-wedge estuary of the Connecticut River indicate that intense mixing occurs during the ebb tide in regions of supercritical flow that is accelerated by lateral expansion of the channel. The zones of mixing are readily identifiable based on echo-sounding images of large-amplitude shear instabilities. The gradient Richardson number (Ri) averaged across the mixing layer decreases to a value very close to 0.25 during most of the active mixing phase. The along-estuary variation in internal Froude number and interface elevation are roughly consistent with a steady, inviscid, two-layer hydraulic representation, and the fit is improved when a parameterization for interfacial stress is included. The analysis indicates that the mixing results from lateral straining of the shear layer, and that the rapid development of instabilities maintains the overall flow near the mixing threshold value of Ri = 0.25, even with continuous, active mixing. The entrainment coefficient can be estimated from salt conservation within the interfacial layer, based on the finding that the mixing maintains Ri = 0.25. This approach leads to a scaling estimate for the interfacial mixing coefficient based on the lateral spreading rate and the aspect ratio of the flow, yielding estimates of turbulent dissipation within the pycnocline that are consistent with estimates based on turbulence-resolving measurements.