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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Coastal and Offshore Engineering
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1528863
This article is part of the Research Topic Coastal Flood Risk: Evaluation and Engineering Solutions for its Mitigation View all 3 articles

Estimating Erosion Resistance of Vegetated Sea Dike Embankments through in situ Experiments

Provisionally accepted
Anne Mozer Anne Mozer 1,2*Björn Almström Björn Almström 3,4Pål Axel Olsson Pål Axel Olsson 3,5Holger Schüttrumpf Holger Schüttrumpf 1,2
  • 1 RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
  • 2 Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
  • 3 Lund University, Lund, Skane County, Sweden
  • 4 Division of Water Resources Engineering, Lund, Sweden
  • 5 Department of Biology, Lund, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Through in situ experiments, this study investigated the erosion resistance of a prototype dike with different vegetation and soil sections built on the Falsterbo peninsula, Sweden. A gravity-driven wave impact simulator was used to simulate waves breaking on the dike. Two sandy soils and three vegetation types (standard grass, biodiverse seed mixture, and hay) were tested for this study. In general, the study showed consistency in the results between the replications and in comparison to former studies. Thus, initially developed for laboratory experiments, the methodology can be transferred to in situ experiments on existing dikes. The study shows comparable results for higher biodiverse vegetation cover and standard grass regarding the resistance to wave impact. The importance of not only root but also soil parameters could be confirmed. A higher resistance was found with higher root densities and lower fine fractions in the soil. Also, a higher forb diversity resulted in larger root densities. Future studies could build on the present findings by conducting a systematic investigation to gain deeper insights into the impact of vegetation and soil properties.

    Keywords: sea dike, vegetation, Wave impact, Erosion resistance, Coastal protection

    Received: 15 Nov 2024; Accepted: 20 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Mozer, Almström, Olsson and Schüttrumpf. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Anne Mozer, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.