Short-Term Response of a Downstream Marine System to the Partial Opening of a Tidal-River Causeway
2017
Gerwing, Travis G. | Hamilton, Diana J. | Barbeau, Myriam A. | Haralampides, Katy | Yamazaki, Gordon
The spillway gates of the Petitcodiac Causeway, a hydraulic structure ~35 km upstream of the mouth of the Petitcodiac River in New Brunswick, Canada, were permanently opened in April 2010. The short-term effect opening the spillway gates had on downstream intertidal mudflats of the upper Bay of Fundy was investigated. Specifically, a multivariate before-after-control-impact design was used to determine if opening the spillway gates affected the invertebrate community (crustaceans, polychaetes, and molluscs), abiotic sediment conditions (sediment water content, mean particle size, penetrability, and depth of the apparent redox potential discontinuity), or resource availability (sediment chlorophyll a concentration and organic matter content) of five intertidal mudflats (two impacted sites, three reference sites) spanning Chignecto Bay, the northern arm of the upper Bay of Fundy, up to 5 months post-opening. No biologically or statistically meaningful differences were detected between impacted and reference sites for any of the measured variables. This suggests that opening the causeway did not have a quantifiable impact on these intertidal mudflats, at least within half a year of the opening. This is likely a result of the macrotidal nature of the Bay of Fundy that overwhelmed any immediate changes to hydrodynamics that occurred after the opening of the causeway gates.
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