Repeated erosion of sediments with biofilms from Rowley River mud flats, year 2012, Rowley, MA

This study aims to explore the interplay between biofilms and erodability of cohesive sediments. Erosion experiments were run in four laboratory annular flumes with natural sediments. Mud from the Rowley River mudflats was taken at low tide and then placed in flumes. Two of the flumes were bleach to prevent biota, while the other two were allowed to grow; nutrients were also added to the flumes. On different intervals, the flumes were eroded and the amount of erosion and velocity of the flow were measured. Additionally, each day biofilm growth was measured using Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM) Underwater Fluorometry. Reported here are 10 minute averages of shear stress (derived from velocity) and suspended sediment (uncalibrated, in NTUs) along with PAM measurements. The complete dataset is available upon request via .mat files, but the dataset is quite large ([e-mail] or [e-mail]).