Abstract
Turbulence is important in coral reefs but is difficult to measure in the field. In this paper, I present in situ measurements of waves, currents, and turbulence to study the vertical structure of turbulence within a depression (curved channel) that is surrounded by coral reef colonies on a fringing reef in Hobihu, Nan-Wan Bay, southern Taiwan. Turbulence was measured using a dual-velocimetry technique, and wave bias contamination in the turbulence is controlled using ogive curve testing of the turbulent shear stress (TSS). The observed turbulent dissipation rate (ε) is approximately five times greater than simultaneous observations over the nearby sandy bottom site, which indicates stronger mixing within the coral reef than on sandy bottoms. The low ratio of the TSS to the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and sweeping events indicate that energetic momentum is transported downward into the depression of the coral reef canopies. The observed value of ε exceeds the shear production rate, which suggests that transport terms or other source terms might be important. Direct evaluation of the transport terms suggests that vertical turbulent transport and advection are significant mechanisms that diffuse and convect the TKE downward into the depression. The observed TSS can be described well by the Prandtl–von Kármán eddy viscosity model and a two-equation turbulence model, which suggests that it is possible to develop a physically based model to quantify nutrient uptake and mass transfer in coral reefs under complex wave–current coastal flows.
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Acknowledgments
The data used to make the figures are available from the corresponding author. I thank the students (ZM Lin, LC Sun, and YC Chiou) of IHOS, NCU, for their assistance in the field experiments. I thank Prof. TY Fan of NMMBA, RS Tseng of NSYSU, WR Geyer of WHOI, JW Lai of TORI, and WT Tsai of NTU for providing us instruments and suggestions. Prof. SG Monismith and the other anonymous reviewer are thanked for their comments and suggestions to improve the paper. This research was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under Contacts NSC 102-2611-M-008-004 and MOST 103-2611-M-008-003.
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Huang, ZC. Vertical structure of turbulence within a depression surrounded by coral reef colonies. Coral Reefs 34, 849–862 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-015-1304-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-015-1304-0