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Coupling Cross-shore Processes Into a Long-Term Shoreline Change Model
Dylan McDougall,
Duke University Durham North Carolina, United States. dylan.mcdougall@duke.edu
Brad Murray, Duke University Durham North Carolina, United States. abmurray@duke.edu
Sea level rise and changes in storm climate will modify the intensity of cross-shore sedimentary processes in the coming decades and centuries. Among the most significant of these processes is the opening of tidal inlets on barrier islands which can affect nearby erosion rates and shoreline positions on a decadal time scale. It is unknown how longer term (centennial to millennial) predictions of changes in shoreline positions may be affected by the changes in sediment routing due to the presence of inlets.
To address this, we assess the suitability of presently available implementations of the BarrieR island and Inlet Environment (BRIE) model, which incorporates the Coastal Evolution Model (CEM) of alongshore transport, for long-term shoreline change modeling which was previously conducted using an implementation of CEM without inlets. BRIE has been implemented in Python for compatibility with the CSDMS BMI and also coupled to Barrier3D which resolves cross-shore processes at higher resolutions. However, these methods may be computationally expensive or otherwise inappropriate for running long term models of large scale domains as was previously done for the entire Carolina coast since 1870.
Alternatively, the methods unique to BRIE can be coupled with existing implementations of CEM that can handle complex coastlines. This may require alternate applications of alongshore transport forcings with inlet-related forcings, potentially incurring other computational costs or additional simplifying assumptions. We will ultimately pursue an implementation with the most accurate results and reasonable completion times for benchmark model runs.
