TY - JOUR
T1 - Predicting monthly to multi-annual foredune growth at a narrow beach
AU - Ruessink, Gerben
AU - Sterk, Geert
AU - Smit, Yvonne
AU - De Winter, Winnie
AU - Hage, Pam
AU - Donker, Jasper J.A.
AU - Arens, Sebastiaan M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This publication is part of the project (number 13709) of the Vici Talent research programme, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Aeolus meets Poseidon: wind‐blown sand transport on wave‐dominated beaches
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
PY - 2022/6/15
Y1 - 2022/6/15
N2 - An open-source quantitative model for predicting coastal foredune growth at monthly to multi-annual (meso)temporal scales is developed. The model builds on the established fetch framework as a surrogate for the complex micro-scale aeolian processes on the beach, to which rain and groundwater-induced spatiotemporal surface moisture dynamics are added as factors limiting aeolian sand supply to foredunes. The model shows great skill in an application at Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands, with a predicted growth of 16.5 m3/m/yr comparing favourably to the observed growth of 17.3 m3/m/yr. Rain, surface moisture dynamics as well as beach width reduction by storm-induced elevated sea levels are shown to be important factors that jointly reduce meso-scale sand supply below the potential (i.e., unlimited) maximum, in our case study by almost 5 m3/m/yr. These factors are most relevant for strong (here, above 15.5 m/s) onshore winds. Consistent with expectations from the literature, meso-scale foredune growth results primarily from moderately strong (9.5–12.5 m/s) shore-oblique winds, which are frequent and do not result in supply-limited conditions. At the study site these winds are most common in winter and hence foredune growth is predicted to vary seasonally, consistent with the observations. Because of the promising results we believe that our model has potential for quantifying how quickly a foredune can recover after an episodic erosion event because of storm waves.
AB - An open-source quantitative model for predicting coastal foredune growth at monthly to multi-annual (meso)temporal scales is developed. The model builds on the established fetch framework as a surrogate for the complex micro-scale aeolian processes on the beach, to which rain and groundwater-induced spatiotemporal surface moisture dynamics are added as factors limiting aeolian sand supply to foredunes. The model shows great skill in an application at Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands, with a predicted growth of 16.5 m3/m/yr comparing favourably to the observed growth of 17.3 m3/m/yr. Rain, surface moisture dynamics as well as beach width reduction by storm-induced elevated sea levels are shown to be important factors that jointly reduce meso-scale sand supply below the potential (i.e., unlimited) maximum, in our case study by almost 5 m3/m/yr. These factors are most relevant for strong (here, above 15.5 m/s) onshore winds. Consistent with expectations from the literature, meso-scale foredune growth results primarily from moderately strong (9.5–12.5 m/s) shore-oblique winds, which are frequent and do not result in supply-limited conditions. At the study site these winds are most common in winter and hence foredune growth is predicted to vary seasonally, consistent with the observations. Because of the promising results we believe that our model has potential for quantifying how quickly a foredune can recover after an episodic erosion event because of storm waves.
KW - aeolian transport predictions
KW - beach–dune interaction
KW - coastal dune evolution
KW - fetch
KW - surface moisture
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126291595&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/esp.5350
DO - 10.1002/esp.5350
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85126291595
SN - 0197-9337
VL - 47
SP - 1845
EP - 1859
JO - Earth Surface Processes and Landforms
JF - Earth Surface Processes and Landforms
IS - 7
ER -