Abstract
‘Packaging’ coastal sediment transport into discrete temporal and spatial scale bands is necessary for measurement programs, modelling, and design. However, determining how to best measure and parameterize information, to transfer between scales, is not trivial. An overview is provided of the major complexities in transferring information on coastal sediment transport between scales. Key considerations that recur in the literature include: interaction between sediment transport and morphology; the influence of biota; episodic sediment transport; and recovery time-scales. The influence of bedforms and landforms, as well as sediment-biota interactions, varies with spatio-temporal scale. In some situations, episodic sediment dynamics is the main contributor to long-term sediment transport. Such events can also significantly alter biogeochemical and ecological processes, which interact with sediments. The impact of such episodic events is fundamentally influenced by recovery time-scales, which vary spatially. For the various approaches to scaling (e.g., bottom-up, aggregation, spatial hierarchies), there is a need for fundamental research on the assumptions inherent in each approach.
Highlights
In all areas of theoretical and applied science and engineering, processes are described over a spectrum of temporal and spatial scales, to provide focus within the spatio-temporal framework of available data
Other approaches use linear and non-linear self-organization models (Blondeaux, 1990; Hulscher et al, 1993; Calvete et al, 2001; Caballeria et al, 2002). This allows for positive feedback between the hydrodynamics and morphology; this can lead to bedforms that do not correspond directly to scaling in the hydrodynamics
Spatial hierarchy frameworks provide a pathway for upscaling or downscaling, built around factual geologic and geomorphic information. This may reduce dependence on simplifications such as the zero-sum cross-shore transport, often applied to decadal scale coastal change (Eliot et al, 2013). This contribution provides an overview of the key complexities in transferring information on coastal sediment transport, between discrete spatial and temporal scale bands
Summary
Gallop 1, 2*, Michael Collins 2, 3, Charitha B. Eliot 5, Cyprien Bosserelle 6, Marco Ghisalberti 4, Lindsay B. A. Erftemeijer 8, Piers Larcombe 9, 10, Ionan Marigómez 3, Tanya Stul 5 and David J. Reviewed by: Vanesa Magar, Centro de Investigacion Cientifica y Educacion Superior de Ensenada, Mexico Gangfeng Ma, Old Dominion University, USA. Specialty section: This article was submitted to Coastal Ocean Processes, a section of the journal
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