sediment and compromise the containment character of the CLIS site. 



It would be difficult to accurately predict a priori the 

 effect of the passage of a major storm (like Gloria or David) on 

 the sediment-water interface. The stage of the tide and the 

 direction of the wave regime will have a profound effect on the 

 amount of shear stress encountered at the bottom. Sites that are 

 fetch-limited in the direction of the storm-generated waves will 

 not experience the full potential of a major storm for resuspension 

 and transport of the bottom sediment. The stage of the tide will 

 control the magnitude of near-bottom current velocities and, again, 

 affect the resuspension and transport of sediment. The depth, 

 sediment type, and benthic faunal assemblage would further 

 complicate any attempts to estimate the overall effect of a major 

 storm on a particular disposal site. Newly disposed dredged 

 material, which has had little time to undergo consolidation and 

 smoothing, will also experience greater resuspension than material 

 deposited at an earlier time; conversely, areas of the seafloor 

 with dense, sediment-binding tubicolous assemblages will be more 

 resistant to erosional processes. 



Overall, the disposal mounds at CLIS did experience local 

 redistribution of the top few centimeters of bottom sediment but 

 not to an extent that jeopardized the integrity of the containment 

 characteristics of the disposal site. The effects of low frequency 

 and short duration of major storms like Gloria did not violate the 

 underlying management assumptions that the Long Island Sound 

 disposal sites are containment areas and that the sediment caps on 

 disposal mounds have remained physically intact. 



6 . REFERENCES 



Bohlen, W. F. 1979. Long Island Sound and Block Island Sound 

 Tidal Current Charts. US Dept. of Commerce. National Oceanic 

 and Atmospheric Administration. National Ocean Survey. 

 Rockville, MD. 3 6pps. 



Bohlen, W. F. 1982. In-situ monitoring of sediment resuspension 

 in the vicinity of active dredge spoil disposal sites. Proc. 

 of Oceans '82 MTS/IEEE Conference, Washington, DC. pp. 

 1028-1033 



Bokuniewicz, H. J. and R. B. Gordon. 1980. Storm and tidal 

 energy in Long Island Sound. In: Advances in Geophysics, Vol. 

 22 (B. Saltzman ed) . pp. 41-67. 



Hurlbert, S. H. 1984. Pseudoreplication and the design of 

 ecological field experiments. Ecological Monographs 54: 187 - 

 211. 



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