STUDY OF WIND-WAVES IN THE GULF INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY AT ARANSAS NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

This study describes a field experiment on wind waves in the Gulf Intr acoastal Waterway. Wind-wave height and period were measured at the Ar ansas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas and compared to hindcast resul ts generated by the wind-wave model for restricted fetches in the Auto mated Coastal Engineering System. The comparisons showed that the pres ent technology did not predict the measurements well. The restricted f etch method showed a tendency to overpredict waves when the wind was b lowing along the channel and underpredict waves when the wind was blow ing across the channel. The poor performance of the restricted fetch m odel in long, narrow channels was attributed to the measured data bein g far outside the bounds of the data used to develop the model (fetch width-to-length ratio, as well as wave height and period). It was show n that wave damping could reduce wave heights for along-channel winds. Analysis of an elliptical fetch suggested that fetch width-to-length ratio is an important variable. Because this parameter is not included in the wave-prediction equations, the formulas should only be applied to water bodies similar in width-to-length ratio to those used to dev elop the model.