Morphological evolution of creek networks in 10 restored coastal wetlands in the UK

Abstract

Coastal wetlands provide crucial ecosystem services including flood protection and carbon storage, but are being lost rapidly worldwide to the combined effects of sea-level rise, erosion and coastal urbanisation. Managed Realignment (MR) aims to mitigate for these losses by restoring reclaimed land to tidal influence. Data of creek evolution is critical to assess the performance of design strategies and improve design and implementation practices. This data descriptor provides a dataset of the horizontal morphological evolution of creek systems from various initial conditions in 10 MR schemes across the UK. Using a semi-automated workflow, morphological creek parameters were extracted from 52 lidar datasets at 1 m horizontal resolution spanning 2 to 20 years post-breach. This constitutes the most comprehensive systematic monitoring of MR creek morphology to date. The dataset will assist future MR design and provide baseline morphological information for ecological and biogeochemical surveying.

Morphodynamic Modeling of Tidal Basins: The Role of Sand‐Mud Interaction

“…Intersection of two channels of different orders does not result in an increase in order. Following Chirol et al (2018Chirol et al ( , 2022, we convert the Strahler order to a reverse Strahler order (see Figure 10). The benefit of using reverse Strahler ordering compared to traditional Strahler ordering is that reverse Strahler ordering ensures that the entry channel at the basin inlet is always classified as the first order.…”

Creek Systems in Restored Coastal Wetlands: Morphological Evolution and Design Implications

“…In order to improve the science-base of future MR design, the effects of these various design choices on creek evolution towards the natural equilibrium state need to be assessed through multiannual monitoring of creek evolution that systematically measures morphometric parameters. Recent progress in semi-automated segmentation and parametrisation of creek morphology from lidar data has enabled the production of time-series of creek evolution in several MR sites in the UK (Chirol et al, 2018(Chirol et al, , 2022. The aim of this paper is to explore how creek networks evolve in MR sites depending on their initial conditions and design choices, and how well they mimic natural systems, in order to improve creek design.…”

Measuring canopy morphology of saltmarsh plant patches using UAV-based LiDAR data

“…By incorporating information from field measurements, LiDAR data can be used to calculate vegetation biomass (Rogers et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2017). Additionally, LiDAR has been employed to measure geomorphological features of habitats, including ground elevation and tidal creek parameters (Chirol et al, 2018;Pinton et al, 2021). This information can be integrated into biogeomorphological research topics, enhancing our understanding of saltmarsh ecosystems.…”