EFFECT OF MORPHOLOGICAL CHANGES AND WAVES ON SALINITY INTRUSION IN THE NANAKITA RIVER MOUTH

Abstract

Salinity intrusion into estuaries, in general, is mostly affected by river water discharge and tidal level. In addition, the change of salinity can also be influenced by other external forces such as wave height, river mouth morphology. However, there has been none of the study considering this kind of aspect. In fact, the rapid change of river mouth morphology can strongly effect on salinity distribution. Hereby, we carried out the study at the Nanakita river mouth for considering the effect of morphology and wave height. One maneuver to escape the situation of lacking in morphology data is to use the digital camera for taking and collecting oblique photographs. Once this technique is utilized, the highly frequent morphological data can be obtained. These data are useful to the simulation of salinity intrusion into the river mouth with a short time interval. Furthermore, effectiveness of each external force also will be examined by sensitivity analysis .