Sediment mass half saturation coefficient

Question

I want to know the physical meaning of KT which is determined as sediment mass half saturation coefficient with unit (g m^-2). As far as I understand, this parameter controls the effect of sediment limitation on resuspension. But how it can be added to rou_sed * A which has a different unit?

And how the increase of K_T will limit the sediment resuspension flux? Doesn't the increase of sediment mass in this area increase the amount of sediment resuspended?

Answer 1

the resuspension term is given by

alpha*(T-Tc)/Tref * (SSsed/(K+SSsed))

where

alpha is the resuspension rate parameter (g m-2 s-1)

T is bottom stress, Tc critical stress and Tref a reference stress

SSsed is the sediment concentration of the particle (g m-2) and K is the half st coefficient (g m-2).

Does that all make sense?

Chris

Comments

SSsed is the sediment concentration within the bottom layer or at the lakebed surface (sediment pool)?

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It is the sediment pool.  So as this is reduced the resuspension is reduced and the rate of reduction is controlled by K

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SSsed is calculated by rou_sed *A and A here is surface area (the unit is wrong then)?

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SSsed is just the mass of sediment (g) per unit area (m2).

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Is that a user-defined value? or it can be calculated by other equation?

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These are the _SED vars that need to be initialised by the user.  For example via DEFAULT_SSOL1_SED in the run file