Wave-Driven Hydrodynamic Processes Over Fringing Reefs With Varying Slopes, Depths, and Roughness: Implications for Coastal Protection

Wave breaking on the steep fore-reef slopes of shallow fringing reefs can be effective at dissipating incident sea-swell waves prior to reaching reef shorelines. However, wave setup and free infragravity waves generated during the sea-swell breaking process are often the largest contributors to wave-driven water levels (wave runup) at the...

Nonhydrostatic and surfbeat model predictions of extreme wave run-up in fringing reef environments

The accurate prediction of extreme wave run-up is important for effective coastal engineering design and coastal hazard management. While run-up processes on open sandy coasts have been reasonably well-studied, very few studies have focused on understanding and predicting wave run-up at coral reef-fronted coastlines. This paper applies the short...

Hydrodynamic Drivers of Sediment Transport Across a Fringing Reef

Coral reefs are highly valuable ecosystems, which are under an increasing number of environmental pressures. Sedimentation and sediment transport patterns are among key physical drivers of coral reefs, so it is important to improve our understanding of these poorly studied dynamics on reefs. To this purpose, flume experiments were performed on a...

The dynamics of infragravity wave transformation over a fringing reef

A 3 week field study was conducted to investigate the dynamics of low-frequency (infragravity) wave motions over a fringing reef at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. Short-period wave motions (0.04–0.2 Hz) were observed to dissipate on the reef crest beyond which infragravity wave motions (0.004–0.04 Hz) gradually dominated toward the lagoon....