Examination of the recent past and future Response of coastal Dunes to Extreme storms and Sea level rise

ended

The ERoDES research project aims, for the first-time, to develop our ability to understand, anticipate, and make projections on how coastal dunes would respond to future extreme storms and sea level rise along the Atlantic coast of Europe. As climate change is expected to cause more intense extreme weather events and an increase in extreme sea levels along the coastline of Europe and other continents, it is crucial to understand coastal dunes behaviour, since they serve as the first line of protection against coastal erosion and flooding. Field observations, a process-based and a reduced-complexity model will be used to hindcast and forecast dune behaviour at highly diverse coastal environments under previous and future sea level rise and extreme storms scenarios. These results will provide useful information and tools for short-and long-term coastal management strategies along the Atlantic coast of Europe. The researcher has demonstrated over the last few years a strong knowledge and understanding of geomorphological and hydrodynamic processes along diverse coastal environments, and aims to develop his numerical modelling skills through this project, benefiting from the strong experience of the supervisor. Knowledge exchange between the researcher and the host will offer the opportunity to explore niche topic such as the use of Satellite data, and to analyse outstanding but yet unexploited LiDAR datasets. The various achievements of this multidisciplinary project will be disseminated to both academic and non-academic key actors of coastal science and coastal management, adding social and economic repercussions to the scientific impact of the ERoDES project. Communication activities such as a scientific field trip, a science festival, and the presentation of new technologies used in coastal science like drones, will also be organised with the wider public to illustrate how EU-funded research aims to contribute in reducing risk in coastal flooding and erosion.