Monthly Archives: October 2013

Soft stuff stronger than it seems!

Now that the storm surge in the wave flume has subsided, the winds are picking up to gale force outside of the flume building… But we have been indoors, inspecting the marsh surface. A number of bare patches give the … Continue reading

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The storm surge is here!

We have reached the point in our tests where water is as deep and waves as high as can be expected during a storm surge on the North Sea coast! Nail-biting stuff, as we stand and watch the waves break … Continue reading

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Plants are due a health check

With a rather clever instrument, it is possible to measure how ‘healthy’ our plants still are. The PAM (pulse-amplitude-modulation) instrument is used to record the state of the plants’ photosynthesis system. Whether a plant photosynthesises well or not so well depends … Continue reading

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More than 10 tests successfully run…

… before we spot a plume of sediment obscuring part of one of the video windows… Waves were still small (30cm) for the water depth (2m), but after checking our data on the central monitor in the control room, we also … Continue reading

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Swimming and skimming

We have now gone through a full week of experimental runs with two ‘exposure’ days on which the water level was lowered to let the plants breathe and to let us work – i.e. carry out our measurements on the … Continue reading

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Do marsh plants ‘feel the force’?!?

We want to know what force the individual plants ‘feel’ when they are rocked by the backward and forward motion of the waves. In order to measure this, we attach specimen of real marsh plants to small metal holders and … Continue reading

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Waves, fish, and toad…

A tough day trying to get the video hooked up with the data acquisition system prior to starting our first proper wave tests…. The marsh, with 2m of water over the soil surface, looked remarkably peaceful through the underwater cameras … Continue reading

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Marsh survives first flooding and die Mäuse do so too!…

Everyone watched intently as we submerged the constructed saltmarsh for the first time… It was amazing to see the water trickling onto the marsh ‘platform’ from both ends and there were several remarks along the lines of “This looks just … Continue reading

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Humps and bumps on the salt marsh

It is important to get a picture of the vegetation cover and surface topography (the humps and the bumps) of the saltmarsh section before the wave runs begin because both these factors influence wave transmission.  To do this, the team first … Continue reading

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Watch the time-lapse movie!

Thanks to James Tempest for putting this one together! One hour in reality equates to one second in the movie….

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