Predicting intertidal change in estuaries

Wright, A. and Townend, I. (2006) Predicting intertidal change in estuaries. In: 41st Defra Flood and Coastal Management Conference, 4 - 6 July 2006, York, UK.

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Abstract

There is an increasing need to better predict possible future morphological behaviour of estuaries, over timescales of decades to centuries to improve and support the development of sustainable shoreline management polices. Whist models to examine short-term, site specific, changes are well developed, the ability to make predictions over time-scales of 10-100 years is less well advanced. Therefore, this has formed a primary focus of the Estuary Research Programme funded partly by DEFRA and the Environment Agency (EA). One approach to this problem entails combining the level of detail available from the well established hydrodynamic process based models (bottom-up methods), with some system goals, determined from various equilibrium relationships (often referred to as top-down methods). This hybrid modelling approach has recently been applied to good effect to support the SMP geomorphological studies on the Humber (Keiller & Young, 2005) and is currently being used as part of the assessment for the Severn Coastal Habitat Management Plan’s (CHaMP). The approach of hybrid models to these two estuaries, in conjunction with detailed analysis of the historic data, has revealed how much of the variation in intertidal area is due to the nodal tidal cycle (an 18.6 year cyclic variation in the tidal range). This means that a reduction in area over a 10-year period is part of a cycle that will restore the area during the next 10 years. Such changes must, however, be superimposed on the underlying response to sea level rise.

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