How sustainable is relying on beach management to promote coastal resilience in sediment starved beaches?

This PhD is being advertised as part of the Centre for Doctoral Training for Resilient Flood Futures (FLOOD-CDT). Further details about FLOOD-CDT can be seen here https://flood-cdt.ac.uk/

Project description

Beaches are of high economic and societal importance. They support tourism and provide essential protection from the marine environment by dissipating energy from tides, surges, and waves. Many beaches are becoming narrower under increasing effects of climate change. The situation is particularly acute for beaches with little or no contemporary sediment supply, resulting in some cases in complete beach loss with dire consequences for coastal protection, local economy, and coastal community resilience. Despite a broad conceptual consensus on the impacts of the changing climate on beach size, lack of understanding of the variability of beach loss in space and time means that coastal management may rely on erroneous assumptions. For example, tourism and amenity value is often viewed as a transferable benefit (e.g. visitors could go to another beach), which would be incorrect in absence of significant spatial variability in beach loss. 

This project will gain new insight into the relationship between beach loss and coastal community resilience by addressing the following questions: 

1. What is the spatial variability of observed beach loss and its key dynamical drivers? 
2. How is the variability of beach loss drivers projected to change under the changing climate? 
3. What are the implications for beach management solutions, including artificial beach nourishment, and coastal community resilience?

Methodology

The project will build upon new national scale numerical modelling led by the NOC under the CHAMFER project (https://projects.noc.ac.uk/chamfer/) and satellite observations led by the BGS (e.g. Digital Great Britain coastlines, DiGBcoast v1.0). The student will combine outputs from national scale numerical models with satellite observations to provide the necessary information on beach loss and its dynamical drivers. Output from numerical modelling will include time-slices under future climate scenarios.

The student will also liaise with project partners and practitioners to choose appropriate case studies in order to determine implications for beach management solutions. For the case studies, the student will build a simulator comprising conceptual, data and numerical models to quantify the release and movement of coastal sediments and capture the sources, pathways and sinks of sediment for the case study area. We will rely on existing tools, such as the Coastal Modelling Environment (CoastalME, Payo et al., 2017), and XBeach (Roelvink et al., 2009) depending on specific case study requirements, to undertake simulations under a range of policy and climate scenarios that will be co-designed with project partners. 

Entry requirements:

You must have a UK 2:1 honours degree or higher in a relevant subject.

See international equivalent qualifications on our website. English language: IELTS 6.5 overall, with a minimum of 6.0 in all components. We accept other English language tests. 

How to apply

Apply online here. Please enter the project title and lead supervisor’s name in Section 2 to state which project you would like to apply for.

Applications should include:

·      curriculum vitae giving details of your academic record and stating your research interests

·      name two current academic referees together with an institutional email addresses in the Reference section of the application form. On submission of your online application your referees will be automatically emailed requesting they send a reference to us directly by email.

·      your academic transcript and degree certificate (translated if not in English) - if you have completed both a BSc & an MSc, we require both.

·      IELTS/TOEFL certificate, if applicable. For more information, please see the University of Southampton's English Language Proficiency page.

·      include a short statement of your research interests in flooding and Flood-CDT and rationale for your choice of project(s) in the Personal Statement section of the application form.

Please ensure that you provide all required documentation and information so that your application can be reviewed and processed.

Please upload all documents in PDF format. You are encouraged to contact potential supervisors by email to discuss project-specific aspects of the proposed prior to submitting your application. If you have any general questions please contact floodcdt@soton.ac.uk.