UKGravelBarriers

The objective of this NERC highlight topic is to deliver an enhanced understanding and modelling capability of gravel barrier systems to support more sustainable coastal management, increasing resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change.

To achieve the objectives of the highlight topic, our proposed GBcoasts project will characterise how multi-hazards along gravel barrier coasts control coastal flooding and erosion and determine how, in the longer term, these multi-hazards will respond to predicted climate change scenarios and the human impacts of coastal management. The project builds on recently funded NERC projects: iCOAST [1], BLUECoast [2] and the ongoing Multi Centre National Capability CHAMFER [3] projects as well as state-of-the-art system modelling for policy advice [4] and innovative Earth Observation technologies using publicly available Satellite observations [5, 6].

To deliver the project objectives we propose five work packages:

WP0: Project management and co-development with project partners and embedded practitioners and expert group,
WP1: Spatial distribution and temporal evolution of UK gravel barriers and their back barrier ecosystems,
WP2: Field data collection at selected study sites,
WP3: Development of broad scale simulator of gravel barriers, and
WP4: Quantify interactions and management intervention thresholds.
Based on these work packages we will deliver a new community modelling system coupled with terrestrial, marine and groundwater sectors and produce numerical simulations which can be used to support multi-hazard analyses under present and future climate change scenarios. These deliverables will be combined with an assessment of the role of coastal habitats, resulting in national maps for protective services and vulnerabilities of coastal habitats to climate-driven multi-hazards. We will also provide tools to analyse the efficacy of future coastal management schemes.

GBcoast relies on a multi-scale approach both spatially, by considering UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) scales and more local spatial scales, and temporally, by considering responses to hourly meteorological events over long-term (decadal and longer) climate-related or management-related changes.

An innovative aspect of GBcoast is the collaboration between the different sectors of UK academics, engineering consultants and research institutions. Through our proposed methodology and collaborations, GBcoast will deliver a step change in the management of gravel coastlines.