OBSERVATION AND NUMERICAL MODELING OF A DUNE OVERWASH AND BREACHING EVENT

Abstract

Sea level rise will significantly increase the need for building and upgrading coastal protection such as artificial coastal dunes or berms (Wong et al., 2014). Human constructed dunes are frequently deployed to limit wave runup and overtopping and mitigate damage from flooding events (e.g., Gallien et al., 2015). Although dune erosion modeling and validation on storm surge dominated beaches is common in the literature, only limited work considers energetic long period swell conditions typical of coastal California. In this study three morphological models are used to simulate dune erosion response to long period swell and compared to high resolution in-situ hydromorphological field observations.