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Short-Term Response of a Downstream Marine System to the Partial Opening of a Tidal-River Causeway

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Abstract

The spillway gates of the Petitcodiac Causeway, a hydraulic structure ~35 km upstream of the mouth of the Petitcodiac River in New Brunswick, Canada, were permanently opened in April 2010. The short-term effect opening the spillway gates had on downstream intertidal mudflats of the upper Bay of Fundy was investigated. Specifically, a multivariate before-after-control-impact design was used to determine if opening the spillway gates affected the invertebrate community (crustaceans, polychaetes, and molluscs), abiotic sediment conditions (sediment water content, mean particle size, penetrability, and depth of the apparent redox potential discontinuity), or resource availability (sediment chlorophyll a concentration and organic matter content) of five intertidal mudflats (two impacted sites, three reference sites) spanning Chignecto Bay, the northern arm of the upper Bay of Fundy, up to 5 months post-opening. No biologically or statistically meaningful differences were detected between impacted and reference sites for any of the measured variables. This suggests that opening the causeway did not have a quantifiable impact on these intertidal mudflats, at least within half a year of the opening. This is likely a result of the macrotidal nature of the Bay of Fundy that overwhelmed any immediate changes to hydrodynamics that occurred after the opening of the causeway gates.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Doug Prosser and AMEC Foster Wheeler in Fredericton, New Brunswick, for their input on this project and providing information on the status of the Petitcodiac River after the partial opening of the causeway. Sources of funding and field and lab assistants for the collection and processing of samples are acknowledged in Gerwing et al. (2015a, 2016a). TGG was supported by funds from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery Grants to MAB and DJH, and a Collaborative Research and Development Grant to KH), and a MITACS Elevate Postdoctoral Fellowship while analyzing the data for and writing this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 2Y2, Canada

    Travis G. Gerwing

  2. Department of Biology, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, E4L 1G7, Canada

    Diana J. Hamilton

  3. Department of Biology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, E3B 5A3, Canada

    Myriam A. Barbeau

  4. Department of Civil Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, E3B 5A3, Canada

    Katy Haralampides

  5. Canadian River Institute, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, E3B 5A3, Canada

    Gordon Yamazaki

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  1. Travis G. Gerwing
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Correspondence to Travis G. Gerwing.

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Communicated by Judy Grassle

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Gerwing, T.G., Hamilton, D.J., Barbeau, M.A. et al. Short-Term Response of a Downstream Marine System to the Partial Opening of a Tidal-River Causeway. Estuaries and Coasts 40, 717–725 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-016-0173-2

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