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Wave overtopping of shoreline infrastructure can lead to significant flooding and consequent loss of life, impairment of transportation systems, and ecological damage. Coastal defenses against overtopping traditionally include hard structures, such as seawalls and revetments, and design guidelines for these structures, e.g., the EurOtop manual (Van der Meer et al., 2018), have been developed from empirical studies of overtopping. Recently, natural and nature-based features (NNBF) including mangroves, wetlands, reefs, and other systems have gained attention as alternatives to conventional engineered coastal protection systems. Field observations have identified the potential of emergent vegetation, particularly mangrove forests, to mitigate damage during extreme coastal flood events (Alongi, 2008; Tomiczek et al., 2020). However, there is a lack of research on engineering NNBF systems to achieve specific design requirements for overtopping protection. Hybrid or multi-tiered approaches to shoreline protection have also been proposed, where natural (“green”) features are combined with hardened (“gray”) infrastructure to protect coastlines and near-coast assets from erosion and/or flood-based hazards. For overtopping mitigation, hybrid designs can add the performance provided by emergent vegetation to the services of a revetment or a wall. It is unknown whether the green and gray features in a hybrid system perform independently and can be considered as separate design elements, or if the inclusion of one feature affects the performance of the other such that the hybrid system must be considered as a single, complex design element. This study constructed a large-scale physical model to investigate the overtopping performance of a hybrid system with an idealized Rhizophora mangrove forest seaward of a revetment abutting a vertical wall compared to that performance of the wall fronted by the revetment only, the wall fronted by vegetation only, and the wall alone.
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This content will become publicly available on December 1, 2025
The sum of the parts: Green, gray, and green-gray infrastructure to mitigate wave overtopping
Hybrid approaches to shoreline protection, where natural (“green”) features are combined with hardened (“gray”) infrastructure, are increasingly used to protect coastlines from erosion and flood-based hazards. Our understanding of hybrid systems is limited, and it is unknown whether the components of these systems interact in any meaningful sense to provide flood reduction benefits that are greater or less than “the sum of the parts.” In this study, a large-scale physical model was used to investigate the overtopping of a vertical wall protected by a hybrid system where an idealized Rhizophora mangrove forest of moderate cross-shore width fronted a rubble-mound revetment. Configurations included the wall alone, the wall with a low- or intermediate-density mangrove forest without the revetment, the wall with the revetment, and the wall with an intermediate- or high-density mangrove forest and the revetment. The study isolated the reduction in overtopping of the wall by the revetment component, the mangrove forest component, and the interaction between the components of the hybrid system. The total reduction by the hybrid system was estimated within 5% accuracy as the sum of the reduction by each component minus the product of the component reductions. Comparison of the proportional reduction in overtopping by the mangrove forest on the wall alone and the wall with the revetment indicated that the mangrove forest reduced the overtopping of the revetment by approximately the same proportion that the forest reduced the overtopping of the wall. Therefore, (1) total overtopping reduction by the hybrid system was modeled as the reduction expected from the green and gray components in series. Additional analysis showed that (2) for the same wave conditions, a mangrove forest of moderate cross-shore width can have equal or greater protective benefits than a coastal revetment, (3) there is an exponential relationship between the discharge rate and the forest density, and (4) the mangrove forest, the revetment, and the hybrid system all provided greater reduction in overtopping as wave steepness increased. The tests in this study were conducted without wave breaking, with constant freeboard and water depth, with a specific revetment geometry, and without a mangrove canopy. Therefore, these results should be interpreted with caution if used for engineering design.
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- PAR ID:
- 10574081
- Publisher / Repository:
- Elsevier
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Coastal Engineering
- Volume:
- 194
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 0378-3839
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 104615
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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