Mixing Patterns of River Deltas Obtained From Remotely Sensed Rouse Number
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1.
Gyeongsang National University
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2.
Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology
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3.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
River deltas have complex vertical sediment dynamics within their distributary channel networks. These dynamics suggest that remotely sensed suspended sediment concentration (SSC), which captures surface conditions, is insufficient for investigating delta mixing. Here, we propose a method for mapping the Rouse number using AVIRIS‐NG imagery from NASA's airborne spectrometer to investigate vertical mixing patterns. The method is based on the inversion of the equation relating depth‐averaged and surface SSC from the Rouse theory. We test this method and its assumptions using a global river data set. We apply this approach to the Wax Lake Delta, Louisiana, USA during high discharge (riverine case) and low discharge (tidal case). Our results indicate that the estimated Rouse number effectively reveals patterns of vertical mixing in both cases. Furthermore, we reproduce 3D SSC fields at the distributary channel outlets using the Rouse number and surface SSC maps. Understanding these mixing patterns is crucial for river delta restoration efforts. Our findings suggest that these new remote sensing data offer significant insights into delta dynamics.
Copyright and License
© 2025. The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the NASA Delta-X project, which is funded by the Science Mission Directorate's Earth Science Division through the Earth Venture Suborbital-3 Program (NNH17ZDA001N-EVS3) and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (RS-2023-00209539). We thank the Delta-X research team for valuable field data sets. We are grateful to David Mohrig and his group for their insightful comments. We also thank editor A.J.F. (Ton) Hoitink, reviewer Chien-Yung Tseng, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, which substantially improved the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by the NASA Delta-X project, which is funded by the Science Mission Directorate's Earth Science Division through the Earth Venture Suborbital-3 Program (NNH17ZDA001N-EVS3) and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (RS-2023-00209539).
Data Availability
AVIRIS-NG L3-derived concentrations can be downloaded from the ORNL DAAC (Fichot & Harringmeyer, 2023): https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2152. In situ measured SSC data sets of the WLD can be downloaded from the ORNL DAAC (Nghiem et al., 2023): https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2135. The software package Rouse-alpha Inversion & Transect Vertical Profile Toolkit is archived at Zenodo (Kwon, 2025): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17218415. The accompanying sample data set includes water depth maps, transect (LINESTRING) geometries, and minimal example rasters necessary to reproduce the workflow.
Supplemental Material
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JGR Earth Surface - 2025 - Kwon - Mixing Patterns of River Deltas Obtained From Remotely Sensed Rouse Number.pdf
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Additional details
Related works
- Is supplemented by
- Dataset: 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2152 (DOI)
- Dataset: 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2135 (DOI)
- Software: 10.5281/zenodo.17218415 (DOI)
Funding
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NNH17ZDA001N‐EVS3
- National Research Foundation of Korea
- RS‐2023‐00209539
Dates
- Submitted
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2024-10-08
- Accepted
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2025-11-23
- Available
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2025-11-30Version of record online