dissertation – Coastally Curious

After 5 years of blood, sweat, and tears, I present to you my PhD thesis: Sediment Pathways on Ebb-Tidal Deltas: New Tools and Techniques for Analysis! I will defend my PhD on March 8th.

How do sand and mud move around on our coasts? This is a question that we need to answer in order to sustainably manage coastlines in the face of sea level rise and climate change. To do so, we use a combination of field measurements and computer simulations at Ameland Inlet in the Netherlands. In the course of my PhD we developed several new methods, including morphodynamic mapping techniques, a sediment composition index (SCI) derived from optical and acoustic measurements, techniques for sediment tracing, the sediment connectivity framework, and a Lagrangian sediment transport model (SedTRAILS). Together, these approaches reveal new knowledge about our coasts which can be used for managing these complex natural systems.

That’s a bit of a mouthful, so let’s break it down and try to explain what I have been doing with sand for the last half-decade…