Impact of mean sea-level rise on the long-term evolution of a mega-nourishment

Francesca Ribas (), Laura Portos-Amill, Albert Falqués, Jaime Arriaga, Marta Marcos and Gerben Ruessink
Additional contact information
Francesca Ribas: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC)
Laura Portos-Amill: University of Twente
Albert Falqués: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC)
Jaime Arriaga: Delft University of Technology
Marta Marcos: Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA), CSIC-UIB, 07190 Esporles
Gerben Ruessink: Utrecht University

Climatic Change, 2023, vol. 176, issue 5, No 20, 26 pages

Abstract: Abstract Mean sea-level rise (MSLR) will induce shoreline recession, increasing the stress on coastal systems of high socio-economic and environmental values. Localized mega-nourishments are meant to alleviate erosion problems by diffusing alongshore over decades and thus feeding adjacent beaches. The 21-st century morphological evolution of the Delfland coast, where the Sand Engine mega-nourishment was built in 2011, was simulated with the Q2Dmorfo model to assess the Sand Engine capacity to protect the area against the effects of MSLR. The calibrated and validated model was forced with historical wave and sea-level data and MSLR projections until 2100 corresponding to different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Results show that the Sand Engine diffusive trend will continue in forthcoming decades, with the feeding effect to adjacent beaches being less noticeable from 2050 onward. Superimposed to this alongshore diffusion, MSLR causes the shoreline to recede because of both passive-flooding and a net offshore sediment transport produced by wave reshaping and gravity. The existing feeding asymmetry enforces more sediment transport to the NE than to the SW, causing the former to remain stable whilst the SW shoreline retreats significantly, especially from 2050 onward. Sediment from the Sand Engine does not reach the beaches located more than 6 km to the SW, with a strong shoreline and profile recession in that area, as well as dune erosion. The uncertainties in the results are dominated by those related to the free model parameters up to 2050 whilst uncertainties in MSLR projections prevail from 2050 to 2100.

Keywords: Mega-nourishment; Sand Engine; MSLR; Morphodynamic modelling; Climate change; Global warming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-023-03503-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:176:y:2023:i:5:d:10.1007_s10584-023-03503-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-023-03503-6

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().