Study of the salt wedge of the Panuco River, Mexico

Abstract

The Panuco River, a microtidal estuary in the slope of the Gulf of Mexico, behaves most of the time as a highly stratified estuary with a salt wedge in its last stretch. The objective is to locate the advances of the salt wedge based an fluvial discharges. In order to do that, a two-layer numerical model is used (Cudaback and Jay 2000). This model has been calibrated with data from nine field campaigns carried out during 2005 and 2006. The process of calibration for the two-layer model was performed for the situation of arrested salt wedge, obtaining a fit for the interface friction parameter C,. The length of the salt wedge was obtained for each one of fluvial discharge into the estuary. The model describes satisfactorily the salt wedge in the Panuco estuary.