Investigation of Morphological Changes along the South West Texel Coastline and the Initial Response of a Mega Nourishment

In 1990 the Dutch government passed legislation that dictates the South West Texel coast must be maintained with regard to the 1990 coastline. The coast is currently maintained by applying shoreface and beach nourishments with an interval of approximately 3 years, because it experiences erosion. The problems with this approach are that the...

The influence of a tidal inlet system on a nearby mega-feeder nourishment

All over the world coastal communities are at risk due to sea-level rise and intensifying weather conditions. Many sandy beaches are eroding as a result of human-induced factors. Currently, the preferred coastal protection measure in the United States are beach nourishments. In Europe, there also is a general shift from hard to soft coastal...

The effects of a continuous nourishment on the physical behavior of the Dutch coastline: Studying the behavior of a continuous nourishment at the Delfland coastal stretch in the first year of its lifetime

The growing awareness of climate change asks for innovation in the methods of applying nourishments at the Dutch coastline. The concept Zandwindmolen has therefore been developed. Using wind mills at sea, sediment is dredged offshore and transported towards the shore, from where hydrodynamic and morphodynamic processes redistribute sediment...

On the redistribution and sorting of sand at nourishments: Field evidence and modelling of transport processes and bed composition change

Increasingly large sand nourishments are used for the maintenance of sandy coasts around the world. There is, however, still very limited understanding of their behaviour (i.e. redistribution) and effects on the marine environment. This PhD thesis explores the morphological reshaping of shoreface nourishments (i.e. long bunds of sand placed at...

Observations and modelling of shoreface nourishment behaviour

Shoreface nourishments are commonly applied for coastal maintenance, but their behaviour is not well understood. Bathymetric data of 19 shoreface nourishments located at alongshore uniform sections of the Dutch coast were therefore analyzed and used to validate an efficient method for predicting the erosion of shoreface nourishments. Data shows...

The economic risk for inland water transport due to uncertainty in morphodynamic behaviour

River systems are vastly changing environments, not only due to natural process, but also human intervention plays an important role. With the many different river functions at play, large amounts of maintenance budgets are associated with river management. For decision makers it is important to know expected costs or losses and the spread...

Sediment sorting at the Sand Motor at storm and annual time scales

Bed sediment composition, with a focus on the median grain size D₅₀, was investigated at a large-scale nourishment (The ‘Sand Motor’) at the Dutch coast (∼21.5 million m³ sand). Considerable alongshore heterogeneity of the bed composition (D₅₀) was observed as the Sand Motor evolved over time with (1)...