Modeling of wave attenuation by vegetation with XBeach.
Arnold van Rooijen, Jaap van Thiel de Vries, Robert McCall, Ap van Dongeren, Dano Roelvink, Ad Reniers
Chair(s): dr. Makropoulos
Tuesday 30 june 2015
16:15 - 16:30h
at Central America (level 0)
Themes: (T) Special session, (ST) Coasts at threat in Europe
Parallel session: 7H. Special session: Coasts at threat in Europe
Over the past decades the effect of vegetation (e.g. kelp, mangroves, sea grass) on nearshore coastal processes has received more and more attention. In recent years several numerical wave models have been extended to include this effect. In the current study, the numerical storm impact model XBeach is extended with formulations for damping of short waves, infragravity waves, and mean flow. The model is verified using a number of laboratory test cases. XBeach is found to be able to reproduce the damping effect of vegetation on waves well, even though the amount of calibration done was limited. This work is considered as a first step only, and further model developments regarding vegetation implementation in XBeach are foreseen for the near future. Eventually, XBeach should be able to accurately take into account the effect of relatively complex vegetation species (e.g. mangroves) on the nearshore hydro- and morphodynamics in a computationally efficient way.
