Frank Sansone - Permeable sediments

Frank Sansone - Permeable Sediments

My research group has been working with permeable (i.e., sandy) sediments since the mid-1980s; these are sediments with grains coarser than ~80 um. This work was originally involved with carbonate reef sediments, but it has since broadened to cover permeable sediments of all kinds.

We are currently funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation to study the effects of surface waves on the particle and fluid motion in permeable sediments. My collaborators on this project are:

Geno Pawlak, Assistant Professor, Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering, University of Hawaii
Email: gpawlak(at)oe.soest.hawaii.edu Web page: oe.soest.hawaii.edu/~gpawlak

Mark Merrifield, Professor, Department of Oceanography, University of Hawaii
Email: markm(at)soest.hawaii.edu Web site: www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/merrifield.html

Ian Webster, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, Australia
Email: ian.webster(at)csiro.au Web site: www.clw.csiro.au/staff/WebsterI

Rationale for this research: Shallow-water surface waves traveling above permeable sandy sediments can induce greatly enhanced mixing across the sediment-water interface and rapid transport of water and particles within the sediment. Thus, hydrodynamic transport in sandy sediments in nearshore and continental shelf waters can be expected to (1) substantially increase the rates of biochemical processes occurring in sediments by increasing the supply of oxygen and particulate matter to the sediment, and (2) significantly increase the rate of return of degradation products such as nutrients to the water column, thereby increasing water-column and benthic primary production. The rapid transport of porewater and particles in sandy sediments renders the calculation of benthic fluxes using conventional diffusion-based models invalid and thus confounds the interpretation of chemical profiles collected in coastal areas and on the continental shelf.

For more information on this project, please see the pdf-format version of the research proposal.

My research group is also an active participant in Coastal Ocean Observing Systems, in particular the Kilo Nalu Observatory just offshore of Honolulu. Our research, which is closely linked to the project described above, is funded by the Coastal Ocean Processes program of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

For more information on this project, please see the pdf-format version of the research proposal.