FIELD OBSERVATIONS AND NUMERICAL MODELING OF SWASH TRANSFORMATION IN THE PRESENCE OF AN ARTIFICIAL VEGETATION PATCH

Global climate change and sea level rise pose a dire threat to life and property of coastal communities. Vegetation has been shown to act as a vanguard against coastal hazards in the nearshore regions by attenuating wave energy, reducing storm surges, and preventing erosion (Jadhav et al., 2013; Zhu et al., 2023). To improve our understanding of wave-beach-vegetation interaction, we conducted a field experiment at the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Field Research Facility (FRF) in Duck, North Carolina, as part of the DUNEX (DUring Nearshore Event eXperiment). We installed a patch of artificial vegetation in the swash zone to test how beach vegetation attenuates wave energy and subsequently how it might reduce erosion. In this study, field observations and field validated numerical modeling are integrated to understand the swash energy reduction in the presence of an artificial vegetation patch. We investigate (1) the wave transformation in the swash zone in the presence of the artificial vegetation patch, (2) the vegetation drag coefficient in the swash zone, and (3) the wave energy attenuation due to the presence of the artificial vegetation patch in the swash zone.