Wave Climate and Bottom Boundary Layer Dynamics with Implications for Offshore Sand Mining and Barrier Island Replenishment in South-Central Louisiana

ivSUMMARYThe results of a three-year field study of wave climate, wave-current interactions and bottomboundary layer dynamics, and sediment transport on Ship Shoal, off the Isles Dernieres in south-central Louisiana, are presented. Through the procurement and fabricating of bottom boundarylayer instrumentation systems, wave characteristics were measured simultaneously at twogeographical locations on Ship Shoal to ultimately validate a spectral wave propagation model(STWAVE) used extensively in a previously funded MMS project which concentrated onassessing the potential impacts of mining Ship Shoal off the Louisiana coast. In addition, directfield measurements of temporally- and spatially-varying directional wave spectra were obtainedat two locations on the inner shelf.