COASTAL GENESIS

Abstract

In order to investigate the effect of enchanced sea level rising (greenhouse effect), of sand mining in the North sea and the largescale effects of beach nourishment, the Rijkswaterstaat (Governmental Board for Ways, Waterways and Harbours) started the project "Coastal Genesis". This paper deals about research, carried out at the Delft University of Technology in the scope of this project. The behaviour of the Holland coast at three timescales, i.e. 15 years, 1000 years and 6000 years is considered. Use is made of line models. New techniques are developed for finding the coastal constants of these models (the use of Kalman filtering) and for simulating the effect of sea level rise on coastal accretion and erosion. An extensive set of data on coastal topography, the JARKUS dataset is analyzed. It is concluded that the effect of cross-shore transport becomes more and more dominant compared to the longshore transport when the time scale increases. A physical conception is displayed, which explains more or less the accretion of the Dutch coast between 4000 Before Christ and the Roman times, and the erosion later on.