Munitions Mobility and Burial in a Micro-Tidal Estuary

The MINELAB project, funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), aims at investigating the fate of underwater unexploded ordnances (UXOs) displaced over or buried into the heterogenous sedimentary bed of a micro-tidal estuarine site, subjected to both fluvial and marine forcing. Our objectives are: 1) to observe directly the combined effect of river flow, water waves and tide on the mobility and burial of UXOs; 2) to improve the models for the prediction of the UXOs behavior. While studies have largely focused on UXO surrogate fate in underwater sandy environments (Calantoni et al., 2014; Traykovski and Austin, 2017; Puleo and Cristaudo, 2020), less knowledge exists on sites characterized by cohesive sediments or mixtures of cohesive and non-cohesive materials (Trembanis and DuVal, 2020). Furthermore, to the authors’ knowledge, no studies exist on UXO mobility and burial in estuarine environments, where riverine and marine forcing interact over a heterogeneous bottom.