Subaqueous and Subaerial Beach Changes after Implementation of a Mega Nourishment in Front of a Sea Dike

Sandy nourishments can provide additional sediment to the coastal system to maintain its recreational or safety function under rising sea levels. These nourishments can be implemented at sandy beach systems, but can also be used to reinforce gray coastal infrastructure (e.g., dams, dikes, seawalls). The Hondsbossche Dunes project is a combined...

Observed Changes of a Mega Feeder Nourishment in a Coastal Cell: Five Years of Sand Engine Morphodynamics

Recently, mega feeder nourishments have been proposed as a new strategy to nourish sediment-starving beaches. This strategy involves the placement of a large, concentrated sediment volume at a single location along the coast. Wind, waves and currents act as the natural agents to spread the sediment alongshore over the course of years to decades....

Ranking uncertainty: Wave climate variability versus model uncertainty in probabilistic assessment of coastline change

Sand nourishments are increasingly applied as adaptive coastal protection measures. Predictions of the evolution of these nourishments and their impact on the surrounding coastline contain many uncertainties. The sources that add to this uncertainty can be delineated between intrinsic and epistemic uncertainty, i.e. inevitably in the system or...

Beach scarp dynamics at nourished beaches

Beach scarps are nearly vertical seaward facing sandy cliffs within the cross-shore beach profile. These features are often associated with eroding (nourished) coastlines and can reach heights of O(2–3 m). An analysis of a six-year dataset of beach scarp presence at the nourished Sand Engine beach shows that the formation of beach scarps at the...

The application of a radar-based depth inversion method to monitor near-shore nourishments on an open sandy coast and an ebb-tidal delta

Coastal management in the Netherlands has the aim to defend coastal zones by preventing flooding and mitigating erosion. To that end, large-scale nourishments are placed in the nearshore, which are supposed to dynamically preserve the coastal zone over a timescale of years. To assess their effectiveness, these nourishments are monitored over...

Behaviour of subtidal sandbars in response to nourishments

The behaviour of subtidal sandbars can be strongly influenced by the introduction of sand nourishments in the coastal system. This study focuses on the impact of nourishments on subtidal bar behaviour at spatio-temporal scales beyond a single nourishment project. It aims to determine the long-term behaviour of subtidal sandbars along an entire...

Evolution of alongshore bathymetric variability around a mega-scale beach nourishment

The presence of complex nearshore sand bar patterns (i.e. alongshore bathymetric variability) has an impact on local currents, affecting recreational safety and nearshore mixing processes. This study assesses the evolution of alongshore bathymetric variability along the Delfland coast in The Netherlands, over the first 5 years after construction...

Morphological Development of a Mega-Nourishment: First Observations at the Sand Engine

Large (mega-scale) nourishments have been proposed as a promising alternative for traditional beach and shoreface nourishments, especially for locations with large structural erosion and sufficient sediment to dredge. This paper examines the initial bathymetric evolution of the Sand Engine, a mega-nourishment of 17 million m3 protruding almost 1...

The sand engine: A solution for the Dutch Delta in the 21st century?

The Netherlands’ strategy to combat coastal erosion since 1990 has been through nourishment, initially as beach nourishments but more and more as shoreface nourishments. In the light of sea level rise projections the yearly nourishment magnitudes continue to increase. In view of this an innovative soft engineering intervention, comprising an...

The sand engine: A solution for vulnerable deltas in the 21st century?

The Netherlands’ strategy to combat coastal erosion since 1990 has been through nourishment, initially as beach nourishments but more and more as shoreface nourishments. In the light of sea level rise projections the yearly nourishment magnitudes continue to increase. In view of this an innovative soft engineering intervention, comprising an...

Sustainable development of land reclamations and shorelines: Full-scale experiments as a driver for public-private innovations

With 80% of the world's population living in lowland urban areas by 2050, sea levels gradually rising and societal demands on the quality of living increasing, sustainable development of coastal zones becomes increasingly urgent as well as complex. Modern strategies for the design and implementation of measures for infrastructure development,...

Onderwatersuppleties: Ontwerprichtlijnen

Nearshore Bathymetry derived from Video Imagery

Owing to the economic importance of seasonal fluctuations in beach width and the frequent implementation of local beach and shoreface nourishments, coastal managers and scientists increasingly demand coastal state information at smaller spatiotemporal scales. Advanced, automated video techniques provide the means to collect such high-resolution...