Gerard Dam

• IHE Delft Institute for Water Education

Estuaries are located where freshwater river flow meets ocean saltwater in an environment of channels, shoals, intertidal flats and vegetated area, like salt marshes or mangrove belts. They comprise both unique ecosystems and economic values such as navigational gateways to ports. Estuaries face significant challenges from morphological changes cau...

Understanding trends in estuarine sediment fluxes is of great interest to sustainable estuarine management addressing anthropogenic interferences and climate change. The long-term sediment budget of the Western Scheldt estuary, Netherlands, is investigated by a detailed analysis of a unique and long-term bathymetric data set and data of a three-dim...

We hindcast a 110year period (1860-1970) of morphodynamic behavior of the Western Scheldt estuary by means of a 2-D, high-resolution, process-based model and compare results to a historically unique bathymetric data set. Initially, the model skill decreases for a few decades. Against common perception, the model skill increases after that to become...

Due to the construction of two cross-shore groynes near Waarde in the Western Scheldt estuary, the Netherlands, morphological changes in the area have occurred. A mud flat has developed between the groynes and at the tip of the groynes scour has occurred which has contributed to channel migration. Both the sand and mud fraction have contributed to...

The natural morphological developments of the Western Scheldt and the impact of human activities on these developments are investigated using a process-based morphological model called FINEL2d. The historical period of 1965-2002 is simulated in a T0 scenario including all the human activities that have taken place in that period. Besides this T0 sc...

A high resolution morphological model of the northern part of the Holland Coast and Texel inlet is presented in this paper. The model includes the morphological effects of the combined action of tides and waves and focuses on the long term morphology (decades) that is dominated by the longshore coastal processes. This model has been set up and cali...

A process-based morphological model of the Western Scheldt Estuary based on the finite elements method is presented in this paper. This model is able to successfully hindcast the morphological developments of the Western Scheldt over several decades. The measured sedimentation/erosion pattern versus the pattern calculated by FINEL2d over the period...

Process based morphological models are used as a policy tool to predict the morphological changes due to (human) impacts. Due to computational time of these models sensitivity of the model results are often not considered. This paper presents a case study in the Haringvliet Estuary (the Netherlands) and shows that bandwidth in morphological predict...