Sediment budget analysis and testing hypotheses for the Dutch coastal system : VOP II-1.2 Long term coastal management and DC05.20 North Sea and Coast

Within the framework of the VOP, the generic coastal research programme, the sediment budget of the whole Dutch coast system is analysed on the basis of all available bathymetric field data. The objective of the study is to obtain more insight into the long-term morphological development of the Dutch coastal system, which is needed for supporting the coastal management strategy. The analysis is carried out with the recently developed tool UCIT and uses a longer time series of data set than the previous studies on sediment budget. The Dutch coastal system is divided into three subsystems in the analysis, the Wadden Sea, the Holland Coast and the Delta Coast. Sediment budgets of these sub-systems as whole as well as the budgets of the smaller morphological units within the sub-systems have been determined. Based on this a number of hypotheses have been formulated of how the sub-systems are supposed to work and how the different morphologic elements are thought to exchange sediment. For the Wadden Sea the hypotheses have been tested by using further data analysis and process-modelling. The process modeling is also meant to identify which processes are responsible for the observed and hypothesised behaviour. Te results of the study are used to recommend on how to approach the modeling of the long term coastal behaviour of the Dutch coastal system.