Attenuation of shoaling extreme wave crests by artificial salt marshes
Abstract
Laboratory experiments in a wave flume investigated the attenuation of shoaling extreme waves by artificial salt marshes placed immediately before an abrupt depth transition. Increasing vegetation density systematically reduced the excess kurtosis of the surface elevation distribution in the intermediate water depth regime. Nonetheless, attenuation exhibits a short saturation regime at low vegetation densities, whereas at very high densities, excess kurtosis decreases significantly across the gauges. However, kurtosis attenuation becomes ineffective as waves approach shallow-water conditions or as second-order nonlinear effects become significant. Furthermore, the highest experimental densities where the kurtosis is tamed exceed typical natural salt marsh stem densities. Thus, in natural settings, salt marshes are likely to provide only partial mitigation of extreme wave statistics in intermediate and shallow water depths, as the wave field retains some hazardous nonlinearity.
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BibTeX
@misc{quek2026attenuation,
title = {{Attenuation of shoaling extreme wave crests by artificial salt marshes}},
author = {Zachary Quek and Sahana Mahesh and Martin Fronty and Seungo Baek and Gun Kim and Saulo Mendes},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.36148},
eprint = {2610.36148},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.36148},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Attenuation of shoaling extreme wave crests by artificial salt marshes
AU - Zachary Quek
AU - Sahana Mahesh
AU - Martin Fronty
AU - Seungo Baek
AU - Gun Kim
AU - Saulo Mendes
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.36148
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.36148
AB - Laboratory experiments in a wave flume investigated the attenuation of shoaling extreme waves by artificial salt marshes placed immediately before an abrupt depth transition. Increasing vegetation density systematically reduced the excess kurtosis of the surface elevation distribution in the intermediate water depth regime. Nonetheless, attenuation exhibits a short saturation regime at low vegetation densities, whereas at very high densities, excess kurtosis decreases significantly across the gauges. However, kurtosis attenuation becomes ineffective as waves approach shallow-water conditions or as second-order nonlinear effects become significant. Furthermore, the highest experimental densities where the kurtosis is tamed exceed typical natural salt marsh stem densities. Thus, in natural settings, salt marshes are likely to provide only partial mitigation of extreme wave statistics in intermediate and shallow water depths, as the wave field retains some hazardous nonlinearity.
ER -