Abstract: Aquatic vegetation alters the flow and sediment mobility within and around them, shaping coastal environments in the long term. Improved sediment transport relations for vegetated flows become fundamental for predicting sediment transport rates through aquatic coastal ecosystems. We investigate suspended sediment transport under flow-vegetation hydrodynamics in oscillatory boundary layers. We conduct experiments in a U-shaped oscillatory tunnel using optical techniques, including 2D and 3D particle image velocimetry. We explore how aquatic plants change the near-bed and in-canopy hydrodynamics from the single-plant scale to the vegetation patch scale. For a single plant, we study the effect of vegetation morphology (shape and biomechanics) on the turbulence characteristics. We focus on the vegetation drag at the canopy top and near the bed to explore the flow-vegetation hydrodynamics. For sediment experiments, we evaluate the impact of vegetation on the suspended sediment transport mechanisms. These various boundaries inform for a better assessment of the role of aquatic vegetation as eco-engineers in wave-dominated environments.

Bio: Jorge San Juan is a postdoctoral associate at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. His research focuses on coastal eco-hydraulics, eco-morphodynamics, and experimental methods. Dr. San Juan completed his B.S. (2012) at the University of Cartagena (Colombia) in civil engineering. He received his M.S. (2016) and Ph.D. (2021) from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Water Resources Engineering and Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is one of the co-founders of the Latinx/Latin American Academic (LLAmA) Talks initiative and an active member of Geolatinas.

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