Wetland-Estuarine Interactions

FVCOM was initially developed to explore and simulate the water exchange processes over the estuarine-tidal creek-intertidal wetland complex. An empirical wet/dry point treatment algorithm introduced to FVCOM is capable of simulating the flooding/drying process. Since the dry and wet points are determined using the empirical criteria, the computed water transport onto the land depends on the criteria to define the wet/dry points, the time step used for numerical integration, the horizontal and vertical grid resolutions, the surface elevation amplitude, and the bathymetry. The comparison with the high-resolution 5m´5m remote-sensing hypsometric measurement data demonstrated that the wet/dry treatment algorithm is robust in capturing the water flooding over the intertidal wetland (Chen et al., 2022). We applied the FVCOM to investigate the physical processes controlling water exchanges in the complex estuarine and wetland systems, including Plum Island Sound and the Merrimack River. MA,  the Satilla River, GA, and the Okatee/Colleton River, SC.  Recently, we added a vegetation module to FVCOM. The vegetation module includes the effects of vegetation on currents and waves, turbulence mixing, and sediments. This module is available in FVCOM version 5.0.