Nam-Hoon Kim; Jin Hwan Hwang, and Hyeyun Ku, 2016. Stratification of tidal influenced navigation channel. In: Vila-Concejo, A.; Bruce, E.; Kennedy, D.M., and McCarroll, R.J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Coastal Symposium (Sydney, Australia). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No. 75, pp. 63–67. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.
Field observation was performed to understand the mixing and stratifying processes in an estuarine navigation channel. An artificial gate located at the mouth of Geum River in Korea discharges freshwater to the coastal sea. While the stratification in this channel is artificially controlled by gate operation, the mixing is determined by tide with about 6 m amplitude of semidiurnal constituent. Discharged freshwater mostly flows though the southern navigation channel and leads to the strong stratification, which could be due to the strong advection in the upper layer during the ebb. At the interface between buoyant current and bottom saltier water, the features of internal waves were observed also with the reduced gravity of 15–22 kg/m3. The gradient Richardson numbers show the seasonal variations of the stratification as expected. Relatively water column was pretty stably stratified in March and partially or well mixed in April and August throughout the regions of navigation channel.
