Overview
Aquatic vegetation impacts on local and boundary flow resistance and thus can strongly modify flow fields by altering the mean flow and increasing turbulence. This has several implications for the local environment, including raising water levels and modifying the local shear stress that may induce scour around stems or patches and promote sediment redistribution. As such, both submerged and emergent vegetation have been described as ecosystem engineers of aquatic ecosystems. Following DEFRA’s (2005) Making Space for Water strategy, there has been a shift towards the employment of soft fluvio-tidal flood defences, where managers have attempted to implement a more holistic approach to managing flood and coastal erosion risks in England. In the UK, soft defences include sea grass meadows, salt marshes and sand dunes. However, current design procedures lack clear guidance on methods or parameters to account for flow-vegetation interactions, leading to uncertainty as to the spatial extent, optimal locations and the efficacy of schemes to provide desired flood risk benefit. This PhD therefore aims to improve our understanding of flow-vegetation interactions in estuarine environments through fundamental research questions including:
How does saltmarsh vegetation development and succession impact mean and turbulent flow fields, energy transfer and dissipation?
See the Panorama website for more information on the Project, the Supervisory Team, training and the working environment.
To what extent are plant and patch morphology and turbulent flow fields, including coherent flow structures, modulated by short (e.g. caused by waves), medium (e.g. caused by diurnal tidal variations) and longer term (e.g., lunar tidal cycles and seasonal growth and decay) temporal variability?
How does canopy motion interact with flow fields to drive turbulence and turbulent mixing and furthermore to dissipate wave and current energy?
You should normally have, or expect to obtain, at least 2:1 Honours degree (or international equivalent) in a related subject.
For individual introductions to each Panorama DTP project at the University of Hull, watch a recording of a webinar held on 9 December 2021. You'll hear from programme leaders, supervisors, and students talking about funded postgraduate research at the Panorama DTP as well as queries from other applicants in the Q&A.