Sediment transport through a tidal creek

A 3-month field experiment was conducted at Henderson Creek, New Zealand. The data show how tidal creeks that are an extension of the freshwater drainage network (as opposed to tidal creeks that are part of an estuarine distributary network with no direct connection to the land) variously import, export and deposit fine sediment sourced from both landward and seaward of the creek, depending on the wind and freshwater runoff, and modulated by the tide. During freshwater spates, saltwater was largely displaced from the tidal creek at low tide, and sediment sourced from the land was deposited inside the tidal creek and exported to the wider estuary beyond the base of the creek. In one spate, during which 80 mm of rain fell in less than one day, 580 t of sediment was sourced from landward of the tidal creek, and a maximum of 33% of this was exported to the wider estuary. Between rainstorms when it was calm, sediment was returned from the wider estuary by tidal currents (but not necessarily the same sediment that was exported during spates), and sediment was also eroded from the middle reaches of the tidal creek and transported to the upper reaches, where it was deposited. The up-estuary deposition is explainable in Lagrangian terms as a type of settling lag, which results in an asymmetrical response of suspended-sediment concentration to current speed in the tidal creek. The return of sediment to the tidal creek between spates was greatly enhanced by wind waves that resuspended sediments from the intertidal flats of the wider estuary, with that sediment being transported by tidal currents into the tidal creek where it was deposited, largely in the middle reaches. There is a broad consensus that waves drive a net loss of sediment from intertidal flats to offshore, which reverses a net accumulation of sediment on intertidal flats during calm weather. In contrast, waves on the intertidal flats outside the mouth of Henderson Creek initiate net landward transport of sediment off the intertidal flats and into Henderson Creek, although seaward fluxes off the flats into the interior of the wider estuary may also occur at the same time. The sediment that is transported into the middle reaches of the tidal creek during windy periods is then available for relatively slower removal to the upper reaches of the tidal creek by tidal currents on a slow, but regular, basis.