Morphological changes on Pensacola Pass, Florida caused by hurricane Katrina using CMS model

Abstract

This paper presents calculated morphological changes at Pensacola Pass, a large tidal inlet in the northwest coast of Florida, USA, response to Hurricane Katrina and the post-storm recovery using the Coastal Modeling System (CMS). The evolution of cross section area and ebb tidal delta during and after Katrina is computed and compared with different sediment transport formulas available in the CMS. The overall model results show that the models tend to underestimate the bed change during the huricane while overestimate the bed change in the recovery processes. This paper addresses the drawbacks of the model performance as well as insufficiency of the sediment model functions to reach equilibrium state.