Coupled hydrodynamic-sediment transport modelling and

habitat modelling in Galway Bay, West of Ireland

Siddhi Joshi*, Garret Duffy, Colin Brown and Anthony Grehan, Biogeosciences Group, Earth and Ocean
Science, National University of Ireland, Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland (*siddhi.joshi@nuigalway.ie).

Introduction
Coupled models provide an opportunity to model the combined effect of currents and waves on the seabed. Modelling the sediment transport pathways in the coastal The Model Domain:
zone remains of importance to a range of industries, such as coastal engineering, renewable energy, habitat conservation and water quality. The INFOMAR seabed An unstructured
mapping programme has acquired high-resolution multibeam echosounder data from Galway Bay, a large bay located in the west of Ireland. Biological and flexible mesh (FM),
geological habitats here include coralline algae (maërl beds) and Carboniferous limestone outcrops. Terrigeneous sediment input into the system originates from with high resolution
the River Corrib and the bay is dominated by fine sands with shell hash. nests adjacent to the
This study makes use of the DHI’s MIKE 21/3 suite of modelling tools to model the physical environment of Galway Bay and in turn increase understanding of the coast.
sediment dynamics. Additionally, maërl habitats in Galway Bay are of great conservation significance with two species, Lithothamnium coralloides and
Phymatholithon calcareum, found in the EC Habitats Directive. Few studies have modelled the influence of oceanographic forcing factors on the distribution of
mobile maërl sediments. This poster describes ongoing and planned work as part of a PhD project funded by the Griffith Geoscience Research Award. Model Domain
Location Maps
It is hypothesized that wave-driven currents under storm conditions are an important driver for sediment transport in waters below 30m and hence the hydrodynamic
model is coupled to a wave model. The model domain covers a region from Loop Head in the south, with the island of Inish Turk to the north and the western boundary
found at 10.6oW longitude. The modelled time period covers one month in which the INFOMAR survey of Galway Bay took place (July to August 2007).

River Corrib discharge input: Global Hydrodynamic Modelling

Runoff Data Centre A regional hydrodynamic model has been set up to model current
?
speeds and water level.
? Mike 21 HD FM solves the incompressible Reynolds averaged
Navier-Stokes equations using the finite volume method.
? The flexible mesh has a resolution of ~1.25km in the bay, with high
resolution nests of ~50m adjacent to the coast.
Water level boundary conditions: Current Speeds ? A combination of INFOMAR multibeam bathymetry and ETOPO1
TOPEX/ POSEIDON global tidal in the ebbing relief are used, with manual edits to ensure model stability.
constituents spring tide ? Validation is using the Inishmór and Galway tide gauges (surface
elevation) and Marine Institute’s ADCP data from Spiddal (currents). + ETOPO1 relief

Spectral Wave Modelling Sediment

Mike 21 SW FM is a third-generation, phase-averaged spectral
?
Analyses
wave model, which models the average wave parameters.
? Water levels are coupled from the hydrodynamic model.
? Boundary conditions are extracted from the UK Met Office second
generation wave model.
? Validation is using Marine Institute’s waverider buoy at Spiddal.
Significant Wave ? Radiation stresses are coupled back into the hydrodynamic model,
Height which is rerun to model wave- driven currents.

Bed Shear
Stress of Maërl
Experiments to measure the
?
critical bed shear stress of maërl Non-Cohesive Sediment Transport Modelling
are taking place in a flume.
? The current velocity profile is
being measured using an acoustic
A series of grab sampling surveys
?
velocimeter. Mike 21 ST combined wave-current sediment transport model is
?
took place aboard the Celtic
? The law of the wall and turbulent used to model the erosion and deposition patterns and sediment Explorer and Celtic Voyager to
kinetic energy will be used to work transport rate. augment the existing database.
out the critical bed shear stress and ? This uses the Engelund and Fredsoe, 1976 formulation with the ? Particle size analyses were
the hydrodynamic roughness of integrated momentum approach to model wave-current boundary carried out using the Malvern
maërl. layer (Fredsoe, 1984). Mastersizer 2000 and dry sieving in
? The one dimensional LITSTP module takes into account the inertial the NUIG Zoology department.
Erosion-Deposition forces when modelling shingle transport and will be used for detailed
Patterns ? Statistics for ~120 samples were
studies of intrawave sediment transport of maërl. calculated in Gradistat and
interpolated (Blott and Pye, 2001).
Carraroe Finevarra Aran
Coral Strand -Muckinish Islands

Sediment Mobility Storminess in Galway Bay

Maërl beds in Carraroe’s Trá The west of Ireland is a high energy coast,
?
Sediment mobility is defined as the percentage of time
? an Doilín (“Coral Strand”) which experiences intense storm conditions.
grains of a particular size are mobile in a tidal cycle and is ? Data from the Mace Head Atmospheric
considered to be an indicator of the disturbance of a habitat. Research Station will be used in conjunction
? This will be modelled by estimating the % of time the critical with historical records as part of the storminess-
Shields parameter is exceeded during a tidal cycle. erosion scenarios.
? The residual currents, residual sediment transport and ? Insitu observations using the benthic lander
zones of divergence/convergence will be derived, to help will be analysed, to monitor the impact of recent
identify the sediment transport pathways . storm events.
Wind Speeds from Mace Head in 2007 (10m)

Future Work: Habitat Modelling of Maërl Beds

Maërl beds have been found to harbour a high diversity of associated organisms in
?
comparison with surrounding habitats.
? An ecological niche model to predict the distribution of maërl beds will be developed
using the BIOMOD platform in the R computing environment (Thuiller et. al. 2009).
? Species occurrence data will be used in combination with environmental layers from the
Maërl - Calcareous
coupled modelling.
? The distribution of maërl has been linked to current speed, light intensity, water
temperature and grain size.
? Multibeam backscatter has also been used to discriminate between maërl habitats and
softer sediments using seabed classification.
?The sediment mobility will also be used as a layer in the model, to help integrate sediment
dynamics into habitat modelling approaches.

References
BLOTT, S. J. & PYE, K. (2001) GRADISTAT: a grain size distribution and statistics package for the
analysis of unconsolidated sediments. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 26, 1237-1248.
ENGELUND, F. & FREDSOE, J. (1976) Sediment transport model for straight alluvial channels.
Nordic Hydrology, 7, 293-306.
FREDSOE, J. (1984) Turbulent Boundary Layer in Wave-current Motion. Journal of Hydraulic
Engineering, 110, 1103-1120.
THUILLER, W., LAFOURCADE, B., ENGLER, R. & ARAÚJO, M. B. (2009) BIOMOD – a platform
for ensemble forecasting of species distributions. Ecography, 32, 369-373.
Acknowledgements and Disclaimer
This research is funded by the Griffith Geoscience Research Award, administered by
the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI). Based on research grant-aided by the
Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources under the National
Geoscience Programme 2007-2013 INFOMAR data have been provided under the
memorandum of understanding with GSI.The views expressed in this study are the
author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Minister for
Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.