THURSDAY 7/18: Sandy Sediments Seminar at Coastal Research Center

Sand Bed Filtration: The Role of Sandy Sediments as a Site for Carbon Oxidation in Coastal Streams is the subject of a seminar 7 p.m. Thursday, July 18, at the Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center in Oyster.Dirk Koopmans, Ph.D. Candidate, UVA, explains: I applied two techniques to quantify the drivers of oxygen consumption and production in a stream in Accomack County seasonally over the course of a two-year study.

The clearest driver of oxygen flux in the stream was water velocity; at the greatest water velocities oxygen consumption in the stream occurred at the greatest rates.

The primary cause may be pore water exchange through the natural sand bed that underlies the stream. The consequences of over-enrichment of coastal streams with nitrogen and natural mechanisms for its removal were not a part of the study but will be discussed in general terms.