Dominant forces in an estuarine complex with multiple tributaries and free connections to the open ocean with application to sediment transport

The Newark Bay Complex, which is part of the Port of New York and New Jersey, is the third largest container port in the United States and consists of Newark Bay, the Arthur Kill and Kill van Kull tidal straits, and the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers. A comprehensive hydrodynamic study was completed between the years 2000 and 2002 in this area as part of the Contaminant Assessment and Reduction Plan (CARP) to begin to understand the effects of tidal, meteorological and freshwater forcing on the hydrodynamic circulation patterns in the system. Because the data collected for the study was not continuous enough in time or space to gain a complete understanding of the system, a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model of the area has been developed in this thesis using ECOM, a version of the Princeton Ocean model.; The model of the Newark Bay Complex developed for this thesis replicates data well at interior points may be utilized with confidence along with the data to investigate the hydrodynamics of the system. Vertical profiles of along-channel velocity averaged over month-long time periods in the Newark Bay shipping channel demonstrate classical two-layer estuarine circulation with a seaward surface flow and an upstream bottom flow. Through analysis of data and model output, strong winds from the west are shown to cause a mode of flushing of water, salinity and dissolved constituents from Newark Bay out through the Kill van Kull, with a weaker flow in through the Arthur Kill (flow changes direction when strong winds are from the east). An empirical orthogonal function analysis of the data shows that this mode of flushing caused by east/west wind is the dominant mode in the system, accounting for 54%: of the flushing mode variance. The Hackensack River is shown to act as a sink for sediment suspended in the Passaic River and Newark Bay due to estuarine circulation. Potential deepening of the shipping channels is examined and shown to increase the tidal flux in Arthur Kill and Kill van Kull by 17% and 2% respectively, which may bring more sediment into the system.