Narrow Results

Coastal and nearshore communities face increasing coastal flood hazards associated with climate change, leading to overland flow and inundation processes in the natural and built environments. As communities seek to build resilience to address these hazards, natural infrastructure (e.g., emergent vegetation) and hybrid designs have been identified for their potential to attenuate storm-driven waves and associated effects in developed nearshore regions. However, challenges remain in robustly characterizing the performance of natural systems under a range of incident hydrodynamic conditions and in bridging interdisciplinary knowledge gaps needed for successful implementation. This paper synthesizes field and laboratory results investigating the capacity of Rhizophora mangle (red mangrove) systems to mitigate wave effects. Field measurements during overland flow conditions on a mangrove island in the Gulf of Mexico near Key West, FL, USA are also presented. Notably, these measurements were collected during Hurricane Ida. Results indicate that R. mangle forests of moderate cross-shore width have significant effects on wave transformation and load reduction in sheltered inland areas. Opportunities for future interdisciplinary collaborations are also identified.

The aim of this paper is to define and generate the method of predicting a characteristic pore velocity in the core of rubble mound breakwaters under wave attack. This characteristic pore velocity is required to properly scale the material used in scale model tests in the lab. The authors propose the RMS value of the velocity averaged in four control points as "characteristic pore velocity" and provide a comprehensive method to predict this velocity in prototypes.

This paper presents the construction, surveying and results of a prototype experiment on stability of rubble mound protection for submarine outfalls. Taking advantage of the Santander outfall construction, financial support from the European Community was obtained to carry out the experiment that consisted of covering the outer layer of the outfall's protection with two extra layers of rubble with a stone weight smaller than that of the project. Three stone weights were tested in three different stretches of the outfall. The experiment lasted two years, during which waves and stone movements were surveyed. Damage and wave data were analyzed and the damage parameter is presented here as a function of the mobility parameter. To take into account the random characteristics of waves in the sea states, a Montecarlo simulation is used here to calculate the mobility parameters corresponding to all the waves of all the sea states that reached the experimental sections. The use of the average of the 50 biggest mobility parameters that reached the test sections at the survey date is proposed here to represent damage results against the mobility parameter. Using this mobility parameter, prototype results compare well with laboratory experiments carried out with regular waves.