Water Level Modulation of Wave Transformation, Setup and Runup over La Saline Fringing Reef

Abstract

Low-latitude and often low-lying islands are frequently located in oceanic regions prone to extreme natural events and disasters of hydro-meteorological origin, such as tropical cyclones, storms, flooding, and drought. In the context of global climate change, growing concern for the future of these environments has resulted in recent initiatives (e.g., UNESCO, 2014) for the building of small island resilience. Many of these tropical environments are bordered by coral reefs that are home to some of the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems on the planet (Pascal et al., 2016;Woodhead et al., 2019) and provide extremely valuable ecosystem services as a coastal defense against these events. An increasing number of studies indicate that up to 98% of incident wave energy is dissipated by coral reef systems (