Acquisition of Instrumentation To Enhance Research and Teaching Of The Estuarine and Coastal Processes Research Group At East Carolina University Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Intellectual Merit: Coastal processes have been a research and teaching focus since the creation of the Department of Geology at East Carolina University in 1967. Over the last 3 years, our department has hired 3 new junior faculty (Co-PI's of proposal; with an additional hire to begin August 2004) whose research cover a broad spectrum of coastal geology. Although our research backgrounds are fairly diverse (groundwater/surface water interactions, nutrient dynamics, paleo sea level variation), the common thread is the study of sediment dynamics on time scales that range from hours to millennia. Current research focusing on coastal processes being conducted by our group includes the evaluation of natural (wind, waves, etc.) and anthropogenic (trawling) disturbances to the sea bed and the associated nutrient releases in North Carolina estuaries (Corbett), mobile mud dynamics in the Mississippi River deltaic region (Corbett), sediment deposition on the shelf of Papua New Guinea (Walsh), mapping the Quaternary section within the Albemarle embayment (NC) including the inner shelf-barrier island-estuarine coastal systems and the adjacent mainland areas (Mallinson), and developing the regional Holocene and Pleistocene evolutionary histories of sea-level and climatic fluctuations and determine the coastal sediment responses in coastal NC (Mallinson/Corbett). This is not meant to be an exhausted list of all the research currently being conducted within our group. Rather, this research demonstrates the how the backgrounds and interests of each individual provide our group with the ability to evaluate sediment process from initial deposition to paleo-stratigraphic sequences. We are requesting the acquisition of a group of instruments in order to broaden and enhance our current research and training efforts. This group of instrumentation facilitates research that encompasses multi-disciplines and explores the connection between field data collection, laboratory analyses and data interpretation. Specific instruments include an additional gamma-ray and alpha spectrometer to the system currently available in our group (measure fallout radionuclides including, 7Be, 137Cs and 210Pb), a low-level gas flow beta multicounter system (measure particle-reactive 234Th in seawater and sediments), radium coincidence counters (measure radium quartet to enhance sediment disturbance studies), atomic absorption spectrophotometer (trace metal analysis of coastal sediments), SonTek ADP and Hydra system (sediment transport), and add to our current seismic instrumentation with the purchase of a side scan sonar and sub-bottom profiler system.

date/time interval

  • July 2004 - June 2007