No abstract

The moisture content ws of a beach surface strongly controls the availability of sand for aeolian transport. Our predictive capability of the spatiotemporal variability in ws, which depends to a large extent on water table depth, is, however, limited. Here we show that water table fluctuations and surface moisture content observed during a 10‐day period on a medium‐grained (365μm) planar (1:30) beach can be predicted well with the nonlinear Boussinesq equation extended to include run‐up infiltration and a soil–water retention curve under the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium. On the intertidal part of the beach the water table is observed and predicted to continuously fall from the moment the beach surface emerges from the falling tide to just before it is submerged by the incoming tide. We find that on the lower 30% of the intertidal beach the water table remains within 0.1–0.2 m from the surface and that the sand is always saturated (ws≈20%, by mass). Higher up on the intertidal beach, the surface can dry to about 5% when the water table has fallen to 0.4–0.5 m beneath the surface. Above the high‐tide level the water table is always too deep (>0.5 m) to affect surface moisture and, without precipitation, the sand is dry (ws  <  5 − 8%). Because the water table depth on the emerged part of the intertidal beach increases with time irrespective of whether the (ocean) tide falls or rises, we find no need to include hysteresis (wetting and drying) effects in the surface‐moisture modelling. Model simulations suggest that at the present planar beach only the part well above mean sea level can dry sufficiently (ws  <  10%) for sand to become available for aeolian transport. ©2018 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Ebb‐tidal deltas are highly dynamic environments affected by both waves and currents that approach the coast under various angles. Among other bedforms of various scales, these hydrodynamics create small‐scale bedforms (ripples), which increase the bed roughness and will therefore affect hydrodynamics and sediment transport. In morphodynamic models, sediment transport predictions depend on the roughness height, but the accuracy of these predictors has not been tested for field conditions with strongly mixed (wave–current dominated) forcing. In this study, small‐scale bedforms were observed in the field with a 3D Profiling Sonar at five locations on the Ameland ebb‐tidal delta, the Netherlands. Hydrodynamic conditions ranged from wave dominated to current dominated, but were mixed most of the time. Small‐scale ripples were found on all studied parts of the delta, superimposed on megaripples. Even though a large range of hydrodynamic conditions was encountered, the spatio‐temporal variations in small‐scale ripple dimensions were relatively small (height η≈ 0.015 m, length λ≈ 0.11 m). Also, the ripples were always highly three‐dimensional. These small dimensions are probably caused by the fact that the bed consists of relatively fine sediment. Five bedform height predictors were tested, but they all overestimated the ripple heights, partly because they were not created for small grain sizes. Furthermore, the predictors all have a strong dependence on wave‐ and current‐related velocities, whereas the ripple heights measured here were only related to the near‐bed orbital velocity. Therefore, ripple heights and lengths in wave–current‐dominated, fine‐grained coastal areas ( D50<0.25 mm) may be best estimated by constant values rather than values dependent on the hydrodynamics. In the case of the Ameland ebb‐tidal delta, these values were found to be η=0.015 m and λ=0.11 m. ©2019 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Bedform-related roughness affects both water movement and sediment transport, so it is important that it is represented correctly in numerical morphodynamic models. The main objective of the present study is to quantify for the first time the importance of ripple- and megaripple-related roughness for modelled hydrodynamics and sediment transport on the wave- and tide-dominated Ameland ebb-tidal delta in the north of the Netherlands. To do so, a sensitivity analysis was performed, in which several types of bedform-related roughness predictors were evaluated using a Delft3D model. Also, modelled ripple roughness was compared to data of ripple heights observed in a six-week field campaign on the Ameland ebb-tidal delta. The present study improves our understanding of how choices in model set-up influence model results. By comparing the results of the model scenarios, it was found that the ripple and megaripple-related roughness affect the depth-averaged current velocity, mainly over the shallow areas of the delta. The small-scale ripples are also important for the suspended load sediment transport, both indirectly through the affected flow and directly. While the current magnitude changes by 10–20% through changes in bedform roughness, the sediment transport magnitude changes by more than 100%.

Abstract. A large-scale field campaign was carried out on the ebb-tidal delta (ETD) of Ameland Inlet, a basin of the Wadden Sea in the Netherlands, as well as on three transects along the Dutch lower shoreface. The data have been obtained over the years 2017–2018. The most intensive campaign at the ETD of Ameland Inlet was in September 2017. With this campaign, as part of KustGenese2.0 (Coastal Genesis 2.0) and SEAWAD, we aim to gain new knowledge on the processes driving sediment transport and benthic species distribution in such a dynamic environment. These new insights will ultimately help the development of optimal strategies to nourish the Dutch coastal zone in order to prevent coastal erosion and keep up with sea level rise. The dataset obtained from the field campaign consists of (i) single- and multi-beam bathymetry; (ii) pressure, water velocity, wave statistics, turbidity, conductivity, temperature, and bedform morphology on the shoal; (iii) pressure and velocity at six back-barrier locations; (iv) bed composition and macrobenthic species from box cores and vibrocores; (v) discharge measurements through the inlet; (vi) depth and velocity from X-band radar; and (vii) meteorological data. The combination of all these measurements at the same time makes this dataset unique and enables us to investigate the interactions between sediment transport, hydrodynamics, morphology and the benthic ecosystem in more detail. The data provide opportunities to calibrate numerical models to a high level of detail. Furthermore, the open-source datasets can be used for system comparison studies. The data are publicly available at 4TU Centre for Research Data at https://doi.org/10.4121/collection:seawad (Delft University of Technology et al., 2019) and https://doi.org/10.4121/collection:kustgenese2 (Rijkswaterstaat and Deltares, 2019). The datasets are published in netCDF format and follow conventions for CF (Climate and Forecast) metadata. The http://data.4tu.nl (last access: 11 November 2020) site provides keyword searching options and maps with the geographical position of the data.