Field Measurements of Flow and Sediment Transport over Complex Bed Morphology

Strong tidal currents and/or large waves in tidal inlets may prevent deployment of instrumentation using frames and frequently shallow water restricts measurements that can be obtained from research vessels. Consequently, there is a scarcity of measurements pertaining to hydrodynamic and sediment parameters in inlets and our ability to quantify sediment budgets or to calibrate and verify numerical models in these environments is thus restricted. Recently, during an International field study of a tidal inlet in southern Portugal, deployment of a state-of-the-art multi-sensor instrument package from a jack-up barge has provided a solution to this problem. In the present paper selected measurements are used to examine hydrodynamic conditions, bedforms and bedload transport in the inlet. Here data are used to illustrate instrument performance and to enable comparisons to be made between observed and predicted rates of bedload transport. These investigations provide new data from an environment not previously investigated in detail.