This paper presents five examples of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to restore degraded mangroves and mangrove-mud coasts. These examples are meant to provide inspiration for the restoration of other such coasts. The designs are based on a qualitative/conceptual understanding of the bio-physical system. This is obtained mainly from an in-depth analysis of historic satellite images and historic maps, while quantitative data are scarce, as is generally the case in these environments. One example reflects the restoration of circulation and flushing in a small bay in the SW of the Caribbean Island Bonaire. Drainage channels were overgrown, and the forest was attacked from the back by hyper-salinity and the inflow of silts. The first, more urgent problem has now been addressed by re-opening a few channels, restoring circulation and flushing, and mangrove recruitment restarted. The other four examples are from Guyana and Suriname. Though all sites are part of the greater Guiana coastal zone and driven by the same physical processes, local conditions are so different that different NbS-solutions were required to catch and arrest sufficient sediments to recreate mangrove habitat. The examples show why and how one solution works at one location, while elsewhere another approach was successful. This paper can be regarded as a supplement to the Engineering with Nature Atlas issued by ERDC in 2024, which focuses on temperate climate environments though.

Intertidal ecosystems are threatened by sea level rise and anthropogenic pressures. Understanding the processes controlling the morphodynamic developments of tidal flats is crucial for sustainable management of these systems. Analysis of three extensive fieldwork campaigns carried out on two adjacent mudflats fringing the Dutch Western Wadden Sea (from 2016 to 2018) provides important new insights into the conditions controlling a permanent increase of tidal flat elevation (‘accretion’), in which the wind and consolidation processes play a pivotal role. Sediment temporarily settles (‘deposition’) on the flats during a period of high suspended sediment availability and water level setup (often following a storm). A tidal flat accretes when a new layer of sediment over-consolidates: a state in which the bed strength is much larger than it would attain during inundated conditions, due to high stresses experienced during prolonged drying. This happens when a phase of sediment deposition is followed by a sufficiently long period with a low ambient water table (phreatic level) and aerial exposure. The chronological order of sediment deposition and over-consolidation provides a window of opportunity for tidal flat accretion. Such a window of opportunity depends on the hydrodynamic forcing (tides, waves, wind), on the consolidation state of the bed, and on sediment availability. Wind plays a crucial role in creating the conditions for tidal flat accretion because the wind direction influences the duration of a low water table and aerial exposure and therefore (over-)consolidation rates, which we refer to as the ‘winds of opportunity’. An abundance of sediment may even limit tidal flat accretion, because large deposition rates substantially increase consolidation timescales.

The CO2 characteristics of the Semarang Bay system on the Northern coast of Java were investigated to understand the roles in carbon dioxide flux. The flux of carbon dioxide at the sea surface between seawater and atmosphere is essential for mitigating atmospheric CO2. The aims of this study were to assess the variation of CO2 partial pressure seawater (pCO2sea) and CO2 flux and to analyse the water quality variable which has the larger influence on CO2 flux in the waters of Semarang Bay. The variables in this study were temperature, pH, salinity, and DO. Different methods were adopted in the analysis of water samples: spectrophotometric to measure chlorophyll-a and phosphate and titration method to measure Total Alkalinity (TA) and Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC). A CO2 meter was used to measure the CO2atm. The lowest CO2 flux value was (1.86 mmol CO2 m^-2 day^-1) during the morning period while the pCO2sea reached 461.04 μatm and CO2 flux 83.79 mmol CO2 m^-2 day^-1 at night. At noon time, with increased temperature, pCO2sea was 461.04 μatm, and CO2 flux was 83.79 mmol CO2 m^-2 day^-1. The high concentration of chlorophyll-a ranged between 3.55–4.11 mg.L^-1. This chlorophyll-a concentration has a negative correlation with CO2 flux, and it was found that TA and DIC concentrations have no relationship with CO2 flux. Based on PCA analysis, it was found that the variability of CO2 flux in Semarang Bay is influenced by the variability of pCO2sea, sea surface temperature and kwa (affected by wind speed).

Sediment mobility and memory effects distinguish transport and morphodynamics in fine sediment settings from sandy settings. This paper focuses on the morphodynamic modeling of fine sediment systems, and an adaptation of modeling procedures more commonly used in sand-dominated systems. An extensive dataset of short-term transport and morphological trends along with ancillary data is used to support the development, parameterization, and calibration of a morphodynamic model of the Lower Passaic River (USA). The model is subsequently extended to include a morphological acceleration procedure in order to enable computationally efficient morphodynamic simulations. The performance of the resulting model is first verified and subsequently validated using measured decadal-scale morphological change. Subsequently, the model is used to assess the current morphodynamic status and the long-term response of the river to forcings such as shipping, episodic storm events, and climate change, with results that are consistent with theoretical expectations.

The amount of suspended fines in the southern North Sea strongly depends on their exchange with the sandy seabed. This exchange is governed by resuspension of fines during storms, followed by burial in the week thereafter. Despite its importance for fine sediment dynamics, the burial of fines into a sandy seabed is currently not well understood. This paper presents a mechanistic conceptual model, explaining how the interaction of migrating small ripples and larger megaripples can bury fine sediment in a sandy seabed shortly after storms. The burial process consists of four phases forming a dynamic cycle. A storm stirs up the bed, remobilising fines, while forming megaripples. After the storm, fines can settle again depositing atop the sandy seabed. Interaction between bedforms of different scales is then crucial to bury fines 1–2 dm within the seabed. Megaripples formed during storms gradually adjust to calmer conditions in the waning of storms. During this adjustment period, fines are buried by current-induced ripples in the troughs of the former megaripples. Field measurements collected in 2017 corroborate this conceptual model, showing fines in distinct patches, both horizontally and vertically. Furthermore, fines are found up to 10–15 cm in the seabed shortly after storms. The data further reveal how fine sediment occurrences on and within the seabed vary strongly over multiple length scales. They both vary on the mega-scale (kilometres) and on the micro-scale (metres-centimetres). As the micro-scale is multiple orders of magnitude smaller than the scale on which hydro-morphological models operate, parameterisations are required to aggregate the effect of burial in numerical models.

This paper describes the effects of anthropogenic deepening of tidal rivers in a conceptual way, with focus on tidal distortion and the residual transport of coarse sediment, driven by asymmetries in peak velocity. The rivers under consideration are fairly small, with small river discharge, and may have irregular hypsometry, with substantial intertidal area, or not. Residual sediment transport is driven by asymmetries in tidal velocity (horizontal tide), which is, however, difficult to establish in general. This paper discusses how and under which cases asymmetries in tidal elevations (vertical tide) can provide appropriate information on residual sediment transport. It is argued that deepening may induce a competition between an increase in tidal amplitude by amplification and a reduction in the asymmetry itself. Linear analysis shows that tidal asymmetry may show irregular behavior locally even for regular river configurations. It is therefore expected that these irregularities become larger in natural and engineered rivers. Analysis of local asymmetries may therefore be misleading in assessing the river's response to deepening with respect to the overall residual sediment transport and the river's morphology. Thus analysis of the overall morphodynamic response of a tidal river to tidal asymmetry, as affected by deepening, requires integration of the nonlinear effects along the entire river. It is argued that tidal asymmetry can be quantified by determining the difference in travel times of the high and low waters at any location within the river. This also implies that tidal water level variations and their asymmetries are governed by the entire tidal volume up-river of the cross section under consideration. River discharge further complicates the analyses by affecting residual water flows, effective hydraulic drag, tidal asymmetry, and mean water level. These effects reduce in response to deepening. However, salinity intrusion and gravitational circulation increase with deepening. We believe that assessing the (long-term) effects of deepening a fairway in a tidal river or estuary requires the use of process-based numerical models to account for all these nonlinear interactions, next to appropriate data collection. The current paper may help in analyzing and interpreting the numerical results.

Mangrove vegetation constitutes a natural coastal defence against waves and erosion. Despite their protective role, mangrove ecosystems have experienced continuous degradation over the last decades due to human causes. At retreating mangrove coastlines, bamboo structures are built to create new habitat for mangrove colonization. Existing structures have experienced mixed rates of success due to the lack of a scientific basis in their design. Optimizing future structure designs requires investigating the effect of the bamboo poles on waves. We consequently conducted laboratory experiments to measure wave transformation, hydrodynamic forces, and flow velocities inside cylinder arrays, mimicking bamboo poles, with varying cylinder configurations and orientations. The experiments provided relationships for wave transmission, wave reflection, and the drag coefficients for configurations with volumetric porosities between n = 0.64 − 0.9. Configurations with a small lateral spacing (causing higher blockage) and a relatively longer streamwise spacing (causing less sheltering) exhibit larger forces and dissipation per element. Such arrangements enable optimizing wave dissipation at locations where the wave direction has low variability over the year. Placing the poles horizontally instead of vertically increases the forces and wave dissipation per element in relatively deeper water. Based on the experiments, we developed a conceptual analytical model that predicts wave reflection and dissipation through cylinder arrays, including blockage and sheltering. The model can reproduce the influence of cylinder arrangement on wave transformation, and it suggests that accurate predictions of sheltering and wave reflection are important to find optimal designs. Overall, these results provide useful insights on how to model and optimize the design of structures for mangrove restoration.

Mangrove vegetation provides natural protection against coastal hazards like flooding and erosion. In spite of their economic and societal value, mangrove forests have experienced a worldwide decline due to human activities. Bamboo structures, formed by poles driven into the soil, are being used to create a sheltered environment for mangrove restoration. The lack of design rules for the structures has led to mixed success rates in their implementation. Improving future designs requires a better understanding of how the bamboo poles affect waves and currents. Currents cause drag forces on the poles, which depend on flow acceleration through the elements (blockage), and the distance from wakes of upstream cylinders (sheltering). We developed a model that predicts the bulk drag coefficient of dense arrays of emergent cylinders in a current, including blockage, sheltering and a balance between turbulence production and dissipation. The model could reproduce measured bulk drag coefficients from the literature within a deviation of 20%. The model also showed that anisotropic structures with small spanwise spacing and large streamwise separation maximize the bulk drag coefficient, and the energy dissipation per pole. The application of the model can guide the design of future mangrove restoration efforts.

Estuarine sediment dynamics are a consequence of various forcings (barotropic, estuarine circulation, and fluvial) that vary in space and time. Here, we present a study examining sediment dynamics in a narrow microtidal estuary, the Lower Passaic River in New Jersey, USA. The analysis incorporates measurements of suspended sediments, morphological change, sediment erodibility, and a numerical hydrodynamic model. The former two datasets are used to develop an understanding of sediment dynamics over the full range of hydrologic conditions, and the latter two datasets are used to interpret the behavior of the system. Subsequently, a conceptual picture is developed, one that classifies the morphological status of the system at any given time into three regimes dependent on river flow—regime I includes conditions when the system is importing sediments, regime II includes conditions when the system is exporting sediments by flushing a thin easily erodible surficial stratum termed the fluff layer, and regime III includes conditions when the system is exporting sediments by scouring more consolidated strata underneath the fluff layer. Regime III is relevant for the long-term morphodynamic equilibrium of the estuary by providing a mechanism that erodes and exports sediment accumulated under regime I conditions. Consequently, sediment dynamics depend not only on short time-scale processes such as the instantaneous river flow rate, but also on the time-history of river flow, and the long-term morphological progression of the system. These regimes represent a conceptualization of estuarine sediment transport dynamics and can be useful in the development of effective estuarine sediment management strategies.

Sediment transport over intertidal flats is driven by a combination of waves, tides, and wind-driven flow. In this study we aimed at identifying and quantifying the interactions between these processes. A five week long dataset consisting of flow velocities, waves, water depths, suspended sediment concentrations, and bed level changes was collected at two locations across a tidal flat in the Wadden Sea (The Netherlands). A momentum balance was evaluated, based on field data, for windy and non-windy conditions. The results show that wind speed and direction have large impacts on the net flow, and that even moderate wind can reverse the tidal flow. A simple analytical tide–wind interaction model shows that the wind-induced reversal can be predicted as a function of tidal flow amplitude and wind forcing. Asymmetries in sediment transport are not only related to the tide–wind interaction, but also to the intratidal asymmetries in sediment concentration. These asymmetries are influenced by wind-induced circulation interacting with the large scale topography. An analysis of the shear stresses induced by waves and currents revealed the relative contributions of local processes (resuspension) and large-scale processes (advection) at different tidal flat elevations.

We studied the drying behavior of slurries of Markermeer sediments in the Netherlands having different solid compositions. Natural processes such as sand–mud segregation and oxidation of organic matter were mimicked to analyze the effect of changes in sediment composition. Evaporation experiments were performed with soft slurry samples using the Hyprop setup. Soil water retention curves (SWRCs) and hydraulic conductivity curves (HCCs) were determined as a function of the water ratio (WR, defined as volume of water/volume of solids). The sediment remained close to saturation until the end of the experiments. The Atterberg limits reduced significantly after sediment treatment involving drying at 50 °C, rewetting, and chemical oxidation. Furthermore, the oxidized sediment lost capacity to retain water. The SWRCs of sandy and oxidized clays were steeper, and fine-textured sediments showed large water ratios. At low matric suctions, the water retention capacity of the upper sediment samples containing more labile organic matter was larger than that of the sediment underneath. Clear correlations were found between van Genuchten parameters and the degree of degradation of the organic matter. The hydraulic conductivity of fine-textured samples with less labile organics was larger. The results give insight into the drying behavior of Markermeer sediment, currently used to build wetlands.

The fine sediment distribution in the seabed is an important indicator for the ecological functioning of shallow coastal seas. In this paper, we investigate the processes and conditions that determine the fine sediment distribution in the Dutch coastal zone surficial seabed, while also assessing the response of the system to human interventions. An extensive sediment dataset, collected in the Dutch coastal zone from 2006 to 2014, is presented. These data are used to map the distribution of fines in the seabed of the DCZ at unique spatiotemporal scales. For the entire Dutch coastal zone, the distribution of fines generally agrees well with previous studies. The recent extension of the Port of Rotterdam, the Maasvlakte 2 reclamation, was found to locally change the distribution of fines. In the sand mining pit and directly south of the reclamation, fines percentages in the seabed increased by more than 10%. We developed a conceptual framework to analyse the distribution of fines and how it is affected by human interventions. Three components are distinguished within this framework: (1) sources of fines; (2) transport pathways; and (3) accumulation potential. These components are determined both qualitatively and quantitatively, based on high-resolution bathymetric and hydrodynamic model data. The distinction between the three components makes it possible to unravel the contributions of different human interventions to the changes in the fines distribution. In the case of Maasvlakte 2, the local increase of fines percentage in the seabed could thus be attributed to a temporary additional source of fines and enhanced accumulation potential. The high spatiotemporal resolution of the new sediment dataset proved crucial to enable development and testing of the framework to evaluate the impact of (large) engineering works on the spatial distribution of fines.

This study investigates the potential of bioturbating Tubificidae to alter biogeochemical processes by sediment aeration in order to enhance ecosystem development in eco-engineering projects. We introduced Tubificidae in three different densities (5000, 15,000, and 30,000 individuals m⁻²) in clay-rich sediment from lake Markermeer (The Netherlands). Redox potential, nutrients and major elements were measured from the water column and porewater at different depths. Mineral phase and redox transfers were chemically modelled and oxygen concentrations in bioturbated sediments for each density were mathematically predicted. The measured results of this experiment showed that Tubificidae oxygenated the upper 15 mm of the sediment. This resulted in decomposition of sedimentary organic matter with an associated sixfold increase in NH₄ and NO_x concentrations in the porewater and the water column. However, phosphorus concentrations were declining in the upper 16 mm, likely as a result of immobilization by pyrite oxidation and production of iron oxides. These bioturbation effects were highest in the treatment with an intermediate density of Tubificidae (15,000 worms m⁻²) as aeration effects in the treatment with the highest density of Tubificidae (30,000 worms m⁻²) was impeded by high respiration rates. Furthermore, with a two dimensional diffusion model, simulated effects of respiration and aeration on the oxygen concentration in the sediment suggest that the bioturbation effect is strongest at a density of 12,000 worms m⁻². In ecological engineering projects where fast ecosystem development is important, introducing Tubificidae to aquatic sediments to optimal densities might enhance initial ecosystem development due to improved availability of nitrogen as nutrient.

This paper presents a new model, using existing consolidation theory, suitable for long-term morphodynamic simulations; we refer to the dynamic equilibrium consolidation (DECON) model. This model is applicable for muddy systems at small suspended particulate matter (SPM) concentrations, where the sedimentation rates are smaller than the consolidation rates and small fractions of sand can be accounted for. Thus, the model assumes quasi-equilibrium of the consolidating bed. It is derived from the full consolidation (Gibson) equation and is implemented in a mixed Lagrangian-Eulerian bed model guaranteeing stable and non-negative solutions, while numeric diffusion remains small. The erosion and deposition of sand and mud is accounted for, whereas internal mixing (e.g., bioturbation) is modeled through diffusion. The parameter settings for the new consolidation model (the hydraulic conductivity, consolidation coefficient, and strength) can be obtained from consolidation experiments in the laboratory. The model reproduces one-dimensional consolidation experiments and the qualitative behavior of erosion and deposition in a tidal flume. The DECON model was also applied to more natural conditions, simulating fine sediment dynamics on a schematized mud flat and in a schematized tidal basin under tide and wave forcing. The computational results of the mudflat simulations compared well with the simulations with the full Gibson equation. For the tidal basin simulations, DECON predicted the expected landward tidal transport of fine sediment during tide-dominated conditions, while the tidal basin withstood erosion during the more energetic wave-dominated periods. Computational times for the morphodynamic simulations of the tidal basin example without waves increased by a factor of 5 when consolidation was included. For the simulations with waves, this increase in computational times was only a factor of 2, as simulations with waves are always expensive. Applying a complete consolidation model would be prohibitive. The DECON model therefore serves as a useful tool to simulate fine-sediment dynamics in complex wave- and tide-dominated conditions, as well as the effects of seasonal variations.