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.

After proper selection during pregnancy, the elderly nullipara under the care of a midwife does not have an increased risk of fetal distress or other emergency factors, compared to the younger nullipara. However, high referral rates during labor - both of younger and older women - were observed in this study.

Understanding the spatiotemporal variability of surface moisture on a beach is a necessity to develop a quantitatively accurate predictive model for aeolian sand transport from the beach into the foredune. Here, we analyze laser-derived surface moisture maps with a 1 × 1 m spatial and a 15-min temporal resolution and concurrent groundwater measurements collected during falling and rising tide at the barred Egmond beach, the Netherlands. Consistent with earlier studies, the maps show that the beach can be conceptualized into three surface moisture zones. First, the wet zone just above the low tide level: 18–25%; second, the intertidal zone: 5–25% with large fluctuations. In this zone, surface moisture can decrease with a rate varying between ∼2.5–4% per hour, and cumulatively with 16% during a single falling tide; and, third, the back beach zone: 3–7% (dry). The bar–trough system perturbs this overall zonation, with the moisture characteristics on the bar similar to the upper intertidal beach and the trough always remaining wet. Surface moisture fluctuations are strongly linked to the behavior of groundwater depth and can be described by a ’Van Genuchten-type’ retention curve without hysteresis effects. Applying the Van Genuchten relationship with measured groundwater data allows us to predict surface moisture maps. Results show that the predictions capture the overall surface moisture pattern reasonably well; however, alongshore variability in groundwater level should be improved to refine the predicted surface moisture maps, especially near the sandbar.