MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences and Faculty of Geosciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, 28359, Germany.
Institute of Geosciences, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, 24118, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2019 Jun 26;9(1):9293. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-45683-1.
The Wadden Sea is a unique and important intertidal coastal zone under the pressure of changing driving forces (i.e. sea level rise, storm surges and increasing tidal range). In this study, we characterize the recent morphologic evolution of the German part of the Wadden Sea for the time period 1998 to 2016 based on a large dataset of available digital elevation models. A sediment budget analysis reveals that the Wadden Sea is accumulating sediment. Changes in the ratio of intertidal to subtidal surface area indicate an extension of the intertidal zone. Most of the intertidal flats accumulate sediments with rates higher than the observed mean sea level rise in the German Bight, while simultaneously the subtidal mean depth increases. For the period of investigation this Wadden Sea steepening is quantified to averaged values of +7.9 mm/yr for the tidal flats and -20.0 mm/yr for the channels.
瓦登海是一个独特而重要的潮间带沿海区，面临着不断变化的驱动力的压力（即海平面上升、风暴潮和潮差增加）。在这项研究中，我们根据大量可用数字高程模型数据集，描述了 1998 年至 2016 年期间德国瓦登海的近期形态演变。一个沉积物收支分析表明，瓦登海正在积累沉积物。潮间带与亚潮带表面积比例的变化表明潮间带的扩展。大多数潮滩的沉积物积累速度高于德国湾观测到的平均海平面上升速度，而同时亚潮带的平均水深也在增加。在研究期间，这种瓦登海变陡的情况被量化为潮汐滩地的平均每年+7.9 毫米和海峡的平均每年-20.0 毫米。
