Innovations in coastal research and instrumentation

The present-day study of coastal morphodynamics involves a dynamic field of research in which combinations of coastal monitoring, process-oriented laboratory and field work, modelling studies and Data-Model Integration techniques enhance our capabilities to understand and predict coastal systems and their evolution. Innovations in coastal research and coastal instrumentation strongly interact and stimulate each other. This paper will give three different examples (ADCP, HSM frame and ARGUS video system) of technological innovations presently applied in coastal monitoring and research. 1.Introduction In the past decades the study of coastal morphodynamics has rapidly evolved and is now a multidisciplinary science with contributions from coastal and marine geology, coastal oceanography, physical geography, civil and coastal engineering and marine biology and ecology. In the late ‘70’s and early ’80’s of the last century the term “coastal morphodynamics” was introduced by coastal geomorphologists (Wright and Thom, 1977; see also Carter and Woodroffe, 1994). Whereas the term “coastal morphology” implies a more static description of the state of the coast, including aspects related to the geomorphology and the sedimentology of the system , the expression “coastal morphodynamics” is interpreted in a much more dynamic sense and is defined as the mutual interactions (and feedbacks) between hydrodynamics and coastal morphology by means of sediment transport processes. The study of coastal systems was no longer restricted to the morphological components of the system but also required knowledge on the nearshore waveand current conditions and the associated sediment transport processes and patterns. In addition, later on biological and ecological processes became relevant as well to understand coastal change. This interdisciplinary development of coastal science has also been inspired by the complex nature of coastal (and societal) problems, the continuously increasing human impact in the coastal zone, the need for understanding vulnerable coastal (eco)systems and their sustainability and the present and anticipated effects of global change. In this definition global change not only includes aspects of overall climatic change, such as the anticipated changes in river discharges, the increase in