Print Email Facebook Twitter Regime shifts in sediment concentrations in tide-dominated estuaries Title Regime shifts in sediment concentrations in tide-dominated estuaries Author Dijkstra, Y.M. (TU Delft Mathematical Physics) Contributor Schuttelaars, H.M. (promotor) Wang, Zhengbing (promotor) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Date 2019-04-30 Abstract Within estuaries one can often observe areas where the concentration of fine suspended sediments is higher than in the surrounding waters, called estuarine turbidity maxima (ETM). ETM play an important role in the natural and socio-economic value of estuaries. The suspended sediments can for example greatly diminish the value of the estuarine ecosystem by negatively affecting the light climate and oxygen level, as well as the economic value by leading to increased dredging costs for maintaining the depth of shipping channels. In at least two tide-dominated estuaries, the Ems River (Netherlands, Germany) and Loire River (France), the suspended sediment concentration has increased dramatically over the course of several decades. This has resulted in a great decline of the ecosystem and increase in dredging costs. As it is not well understood why these so called regime shifts in suspended sediment concentrations occurred, it remains unclear whether similar regime shifts can occur in other tide-dominated estuaries. The current leading hypothesis states that the regime shifts in the Ems and Loire are a result of man-made deepening of the estuary in the preceding decades. In addition, the hypothesis states that a similar regime shift can also occur in other tide-dominated estuaries that are subject to deepening. In this thesis, this hypothesis is systematically investigated by investigating the main physical processes that drive the sediment dynamics in tide-dominated estuaries and their response to channel deepening. This is illustrated by taking examples of two estuaries: the Ems (Netherlands, Germany) and Scheldt (Netherlands, Belgium)… To reference this document use: https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:28e12122-9c63-4260-aa87-b9e8f7de35fe ISBN 978-94-6380-311-3 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type doctoral thesis Rights © 2019 Y.M. Dijkstra Files PDF Dissertation_Yoeri_Dijkstra.pdf 102.25 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:28e12122-9c63-4260-aa87-b9e8f7de35fe/datastream/OBJ/view