Matthieu de Schipper PhD started monitoring the profile of a stretch of beach three and a half years ago in monthly intervals. Monitoring the depth alongshore is of scientific interest, because it can reveal the need for or the effects of sand nourishment. Not only that, the depth profiles can also reveal places where dangerous off-shore currents can occur.
De Schipper compared the development along the Dutch coast with those of natural beaches in Australia where the swell waves are less frequent but much more powerful. He found that the small wind-driven waves of the North Sea will change the profile along the coast more slowly than the Australian swell waves.
Another remarkable finding was that during the observation period off Vlugtenburg beach, shortly after sand nourishment took place, they did see a gradual transition from the steep artificial bank into more natural slopes. Over the same period, the beach shrank from 200 to 150 metres wide. But strangely enough, the jet ski gauges showed hardly any variance along the coast, as though the waves and tides had smoothened out all differences.
More generally De Schipper established that changes along the Dutch coast occur much slower than at the US east coast or Australian east coast.
The jetskiing PhD will be working parttime as a postdoc at the coastal engineering group (CEGS faculty) alongside developing his own business ‘Shore Monitoring’.
→ M.A. De Schipper, Alongshore variability of nourished and natural beaches, PhD supervisors Prof. Marcel Stive and Dr. A.J.H.M. Reniers, January 16, 2014
Comments are closed.