Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2009VI152B

Investigation of Sediment Export from St Thomas Watersheds

Institute: Virgin Islands
Year Established: 2009 Start Date: 2009-03-01 End Date: 2010-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $30,056 Total Non-Federal Funds: Not available

Principal Investigators: Kerry Brown, Gaboury Benoit

Project Summary: We propose to investigate sediment export from watersheds in St. Thomas. We will continuously monitor turbidity (surrogate for suspended matter) and stage/discharge in Dorothea Gut and rainfall amount in its watershed. These data will allow us to evaluate the timing and quantity of erosion and sediment export as a function of rainfall. We will also collect cores from several salt ponds and measure sediment accumulation rates with the radionuclides 210Pb, 137Cs, and 7Be. This information will be used to evaluate long term (multi-decade scale) variations in sediment export from several watersheds.