Erodibility of salt marsh sediments under storm-surge conditions

Salt marshes are unique habitats that provide diverse ecosystem services including coastal protection during storm conditions in addition to storing carbon from the atmosphere. The loss of salt marshes is a worrying phenomenon on a global scale and little is known about their likely response, in terms of likelihood of erosion, to predicted increases in storminess. We investigated the relationships between hydrodynamic forcing and the erosion of intertidal sediments during high-magnitude events in the Large Wave Flume (GWK) facility in Hannover. A range of different intertidal sediments (sandy to clay-silt rich) were extracted from the field and exposed to a variety of true-to-scale simulation of storm conditions (inundation depth and wave height combinations). Sediment surfaces were exposed both horizontally and vertically to investigate sediment mobilisation from marsh platforms or mudflats and marsh edge …