Changed sediment composition prevents recovery of macrobenthic community four years after a shoreface nourishment at the Holland coast

Sand nourishment is a widespread management strategy to protect sandy coasts against erosion. Nourishments can impact the benthic fauna directly by burial and indirectly by changing environmental conditions such as bottom shear stress and/or sediment composition (grain size distribution). The macrobenthic community in soft-bottom environments...

Monitoring underwater nourishments using multibeam bathymetric and backscatter time series

Natural and man-induced coastal erosion endanger life and environment in coastal areas worldwide. For sedimentary barrier coasts, beach and underwater nourishments are an efficient coastal protection strategy. To optimize nourishments and to understand their impact on the marine environment, monitoring strategies are required. In this study,...

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...

Sediment transport during the execution of the pilot nourishment Ameland Inlet: Development of a tool for analysing bathymetric surveys, applied on the pilot nourishment Ameland inlet

Within the KustGenese 2.0 research project a 5Mm3 pilot nourishment is created on the ebb-tidal delta of Ameland. For this thesis I was involved in the parties; Van den Herik, the contractor who executed the work, Deltares and Rijkswaterstaat. A tool is created to quickly analyse new surveys in combination with the ships deposit data. The tool...

Modelling of bed sediment composition changes at the lower shoreface of the Sand Motor

Large perturbations in the coastline, such as the 'Sand Motor' nourishment (∼21 million m³) at the Holland coast, can initiate considerable spatial and temporal changes in the median grain size (D₅₀) of the sea bed on the lower shoreface. The relevance of hydrodynamic conditions for the development of the heterogeneity...

Nourishment strategies for the Ameland Inlet

Sea level rise poses challenges to the tidal inlet systems of the Wadden Sea, including the barrier islands. If no measures are taken, the shorelines of the islands will retreat and the basins may drown. In the Ameland Inlet, the Boschplaat at the eastern tip of Ameland and Bornrif at the western tip of Terschelling are currently shrinking. <br/...

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)...

Pilot Sand Groynes Delfland Coast: Efficiency and practical feasibility of a pulse nourishment

In September and October of the year 2009, three sandgroyne nourishments have been executed at the Delfland Coast near the village of Ter Heijde. The nourishments have been executed to restore the sediment buffer in the upper part of the coastal profile. A sandgroyne is a concentrated amount of sediment (200.000m3) artificially nourished from...