The influence of hydrodynamic forcing on sediment transport pathways and shoreline evolution in a coral reef environment

Estuarine Ecosystem Engineering: Biogeomorphology in the estuarine intertidal

The aim of this thesis was to investigate how (macro)benthic organisms interact with the ecological functioning, erodibility and small- to medium-scale morphodynamics of estuarine intertidal sediment by modulating its composition and/or properties. In these interactions, scale is of great importance for the ecosystem engineers. The changes they...

Benthic community-mediated sediment dynamics

We assessed the influence of benthic communities on sediment properties in large defaunation experiments in replicated 16 m2 plots on a tidal flat in the Westerschelde estuary (SW Netherlands). We compared microphytobenthos and benthic macrofauna recovery and recolonisation between control and defaunated sediments during 8 mo following the...

Small-Scale Sounding Tests on Soft Saturated Cohesive Soils

Knowledgeof the yield strength of subaqueous sediment beds is essential to calculate their sensitivity to erosion and failure. Also for dredging operations yield strength is a parameter of the utmost importance. This report describes measurements of the yield strength profiles of cohesive sediment samples with a sounding instrument developed by...

Karakterisering van het proefmateriaal voor de sedimentatiebalansmetingen

Bij de experimenten met de sedimentatiebalans in 1979 en 1980 zijn sedimentmonsters gebruikt bestaande uit verschillende zandsoorten. Deze soorten zijn verkregen door herhaalde uitzeving van modelzand dat reeds in het laboratorium aanwezig was. Daarvoor zijn draadzeven gebruikt met een maaswijdte-interval waarvan de verhouding tussen boven- en...

Settling Tube Analysis of Sand

For various reasons particle-size analysis of sediment is used in many fields of science and technology, a.o. earth sciences, agricultural and civil engineering. Relatively coarse-grained sediment like sand, with dimensions ranging from 0.06 till 2 mm, is analyzed almost exclusively by sieving. The size of particles in the silt and clay range (0...

Concentration effects on settling-tube analysis

A mathematical model describing the unsteady stratified settling of sediment samples and nonuniform suspensions has been developed, taking into account the influence of the sediment concentration on the fall velocity. In principle, the resulting equations can be solved using the method of integration along characteristics. An estimating...