Greening the dike revetment with historic sod transplantation technique in a living lab

Abstract

Coastal flood managers seek to anticipate future flood risk and as a result consider the adaptation of flood defences. Instead of crest heightening, dikes can be adapted to include hydrodynamic reducing vegetated foreshores to form a nature‐based hybrid flood defence, for instance; at managed realignments. In this study we investigated the potential of vegetated revetments as a natural continuous connection between the realigned dike and restored foreshore. We applied the historic grass sod transplantation technique with the aim to improve our understanding of the strength of a transplanted sod revetment. In Living Lab Hedwige‐Prosperpolder, dikes were available for in‐situ experiments during managed realignment preparations. We transplanted grass sods and studied erosion resistance after one growth season. Our results show transplanted sod vegetation continued to grow and started to attach to the clay layer. While erosion occurred under extreme wave impact and overflow, the sod pulling method revealed individual sod strength. In conclusion, sod transplantation is a good technique to source local material for green realigned dike revetments. A vegetated dike revetment can hereby create a natural continuous connection between the realigned dike and foreshore, which benefits flood protection as well as flora and fauna.