Print Email Facebook Twitter Interaction between hydrodynamics and salt marsh dynamics: An example from Jiangsu coast Title Interaction between hydrodynamics and salt marsh dynamics: An example from Jiangsu coast Author Hu, Z. Stive, M.J.F. Zitman, T.J. Ye, Q.H. Wang, Z.B. Luijendijk, A. Gong, Z. Suzuki, T. Faculty Civil Engineering and Geosciences Department Waterbouwkunde Date 2011-12-14 Abstract Salt marshes are distributed along more than 400 km of the Jiangsu coast in Eastern China, which are regarded as important habitats and serve as coastal protection as well. Previous research has proven that salt-marsh vegetation can reduce current velocity and dampen waves by its stems and leaves. Reversely, hydrodynamic forces also have a significant influence on the growth of salt-marsh vegetation. To study the interaction between hydrodynamics and salt-marsh development on the Jiangsu coast, a 2D schematized model has been built by using a new interactive structure between flow, wave and vegetation modules of the process-based model Delft3D. In the hydrodynamic simulations, the impact of vegetation on waves and currents is quantified. In the vegetation growth module, the development of salt marshes is influenced by inundation time and shear stress from hydrodynamic simulations. The feedback loop is completed by hydrodynamic modules receiving the newly updated data of salt-marsh field from the vegetation growth module. The results show that wave height and current velocity are significantly influenced by vegetation. Reversely, the dynamics of marsh vegetation greatly rely on hydrodynamic conditions. Consequently, this interaction between hydrodynamics and salt marsh induces temporal variations of each other. In the model, the salt marsh is especially sensitive to the waves. Though wave height is relatively small on the Jiangsu coast, in terms of bed shear stress, waves may be of great importance to the development of salt marsh. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:3f630242-12bd-4138-908c-7105e13f5fb6 Source Proceedings of the 6th international Conference on Asian and Pacific Coasts: APAC 2011, Hong Kong, 14-16 December 2011 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c) 2011 The Author(s)Delft University of Technology Files PDF 274791.pdf 285.71 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:3f630242-12bd-4138-908c-7105e13f5fb6/datastream/OBJ/view