LAND COVER AND SEDIMENT LAYERS AS CONTROLS OF INLET BREACHING

Abstract

Understanding the processes that take place during a storm leading to coastal morphological change has been a challenging topic for coastal engineers. Over the years, many models have been developed to predict the coastal response to storms evolving from the one dimensional empirical models to two or three dimensional process based models. We hypothesized that the predictive capacity of these models can be improved by incorporating the site specific effect of the land cover features that are in place at the time of the storm. In this work, we present a case study of the development of the Pea Island breach, Outer Banks, North Carolina during Hurricane Irene in August 2011. The inclusion of the land cover effects into the model significantly improves the predictive capability of the model results.