Abstract:
Coastal lagoons are of great ecological and socioeconomic
importance given their privileged location at
the land-ocean interface. Tidal inlets, which connect
the lagoon to the open ocean constitute navigation
routes and enable fish and larvae migrations, nutrient
exchanges and maintenance of water quality and
salinity levels in the lagoonal water. However, wavedominated
tidal inlets are subjected to fast
morphological changes as they constantly need to
adapt to the oceanic forcing. When the flushing of
sediments by ebb currents cannot balance the longshore
and cross-shore wave-induced transport that infill
the lagoon, inlets may eventually close. In order to
predict accurately such morphological changes, it is
primordial to understand well the physical processes
that govern the dynamics of the inlet. Numerical
models constitute very powerful tools to investigate
these processes.
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