Publications

Wave-induced overwash of sand dunes may cause rapid profile changes and possible dune destruction, thus increasing the flood risk landward of dunes. Accurate modeling of the wave overwash processes is therefore essential in predicting dune profile evolution during overwash events. However, available field and laboratory data are very limited.
[Read more…] about Wave Overtopping and Overwash of Dunes

The study of dune morphology represents a valuable tool in the investigation of planetary wind systems—the primary factor controlling the dune shape is the wind directionality. [Read more…] about Dune Formation Under Bimodal Winds

Dredge cutting forces produced by the movement through the sediment have been measured with the laboratory dredge carriage located at the Haynes Coastal Engineering Laboratory. The sediment bed that was used for the dredging test was considered to be relatively smooth and the sediment used was sand with ad 50= 0.27 mm. [Read more…] about Laboratory Measurement of Forces on a Dredge Cutter Head

In this work we present measurements of vegetation cover over parabolic dunes with different degrees of activation along the north-eastern Brazilian coast. [Read more…] about Measurements and numerical simulations of the degree of activity and vegetation cover on parabolic dunes in North-Eastern Brazil

The Delaware Atlantic coast of 40km length is suffering from beach erosion. The State of Delaware placed approximately 1,100,0001m3 sand on its four beaches in 1998. Beach profiles were surveyed along fixed 65 cross-shore lines almost semiannually for 9–11 times until 2005. The measured profiles are analyzed to obtain the shoreline displacement and the area changes in the landward and shoreward zones between the two successive profile surveys. [Read more…] about Inverse Estimation of Sand Transport Rates on Nourished Delaware Beaches

Barchans are dunes of high mobility which have a crescent shape and propagate under conditions of unidirectional wind. [Read more…] about Minimal Size of a Barchan Dune

We derive a saturated sand flux model based on the previous models of Sauermann et al (2001 Phys. Rev. E 64 0313005) and Sørensen (2004 Geomorphology 59 53) and determine its parameters, as a function of the grain and fluid properties, from a comparison with wind tunnel data. We also show that dunes simulated with the new sand transport model compare well with observations of Moroccan dunes.

Vegetation is the most common and most reliable stabilizer of loose soil or sand. This ancient technique is for the first time cast into a set of equations of motion describing the competition between aeolian sand transport and vegetation growth. [Read more…] about Vegetation Against Dune Mobility

We study an evolutionary version of the spatial prisoner’s dilemma game (SPD), where the agents are placed in a random graph. For graphs with fixed connectivity, alpha, we show that for low values of the final density of cooperating agents, depends on the initial conditions. [Read more…] about Evolutionary Prisoner’s Dilemma in Random Graphs

Beautiful dune patterns can be found in deserts and along coasts due to the instability of a plain sheet of sand under the action of the wind. Barchan dunes are highly mobile aeolian dunes found in areas of low sand availability and unidirectional wind fields. [Read more…] about Breeding and solitary wave behavior of dunes