Little Sand Bay Harbor, seen in Figure 2, is a harbor on Lake Superior located on the Bayfield Peninsula of Wisconsin. The location can be seen in Figures 3 and 4. A popular boar launch, Little Sand Bay Harbor is operated by the US National Park Service (NPS). The harbor has become expensive to maintain, as sediment accumulates in the harbor, making the water depth shallow. This issue can become accentuated by drops in Lake Superior water level. This sediment accumulation is costly, as the NPS must dredge the harbor regularly to maintain water depths to accommodate its own boats, as well as those of the public.

The goal of our project was to create a sediment budget of the harbor to determine where the sediment was entering, leaving, and accumulating. Armed with this information, the NPS would be able to modify the harbor to prevent the costly accumulation of sediment and reduce the amount of dredging required. In order to perform this complex objective, we needed to collect data on the site, including determination of the site bathymetry, velocity profiles, sediment concentrations, lake water level fluctuation, and wave conditions. In addition to collecting these traditional values, we deployed sediment traps to provide an estimate of the amount of sediment which was settling inside the harbor, seen in Figure 1. This website explains the process of creating, deploying, and analyzing the results of the sediment traps.

Figure 1: Sediment Trap Deployment

Figure 3: Wisconsin with Bayfield Peninsula in red box

Figure 4: Little Sand Bay Location