Beaches and Dunes
Delfland Sand Motor Pilot The Hague, the Netherlands
The Delfland Sand Motor experiment was a new coastal maintenance strategy designed to harness the power of winds, waves, and currents. The strategy will help protect part of the Dutch coast, while encouraging the development of new beach and dunes, as well as the valuable flora and fauna associated with them. In contrast to typical sand nourishment projects, this was a single mega-nourishment operation that deposited a large quantity of sand in a single location in 2011. The traditional approach to sand nourishment was to maintain the shoreline and to safeguard the hinterland by making smaller-volume sand deposits more frequently, which repeatedly disturbed the ecosystem. A total of about 12 million cubic meters is nourished every year. It is expected that this volume will increase significantly in the coming decades due to sea level rise. This project was undertaken by Rijkswaterstaat, the Province of South Holland, and the EcoShape consortium consisting of partners Royal Haskoning DHV, Wageningen University & Research, Deltares, Van Oord and Boskalis.
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