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HYDROLOGY OF COASTAL WETLANDS OF LAKE SUPERIOR: LAKE AND TRIBUTARY ROLES IN MIXING REGIME AND TURNOVER TIMES
Citation:
Trebitz, A S., J A. Morrice, A M. Cotter, AND M L. Knuth. HYDROLOGY OF COASTAL WETLANDS OF LAKE SUPERIOR: LAKE AND TRIBUTARY ROLES IN MIXING REGIME AND TURNOVER TIMES. Presented at International Association for Great Lakes Research 2000 Conference, Great Lakes, Great Rivers, A Vision for Tomorrow, Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, May 21-26, 2000.
Description:
Our work on coastal wetlands of western Lake Superior indicates that hydrological linkages to the lake and watershed are highly dynamic, with potentially significant implications for wetland ecosystem structure and function. Time series data on tributary discharges and seiche amplitudes are used as a basis for comparing water sources (tributary versus seiche), hydrologic residence times, and mixing dynamics for a set of morphologically diverse coastal wetlands. Depending on the combination of wetland size (50x range present), tributary baseflow (100x range present) and seiche amplitude (4x range present), wetlands differed substantially in dydrologic residence time and in the relative contribution of lake and tributary to water turnover. Water mixing regimes can be predicted by wetland hydrology which in turn depend on morphological parameters such as wetland surface area, size and position of the tributaries, and degree of connection to the lake. Tributary water inputs dominated wetland hydrology during the unusually wet summer of 1999, but lake water influences can be substantial in other years and seasons. Our results will aid in developing a function-oriented wetland classification scheme and help establish the role of coastal wetlands in biogeochemiocal processes at the landscape scale.