WICGE in conjunction with the NSW Coasts, Oceans, and Ports Engineering Panel (COPEP) is  hosting a talk in Sydney by  Dr. Meg Palmsten, Naval Research Labs (USA) on April 10. Anyone in the Sydney area (or beyond) is welcome to attend.

Dr Meg Palmsten, U.S. Naval Research Lab

Coastal foredunes along developed coastlines are dynamic features that continually evolve in response to changing coastal dynamics, aeolian processes, and management decisions.  Predicting morphologic evolution of dunes is important to coastal engineers and managers because dunes provide ecosystem services and can reduce storm damages to coastal infrastructure, both of which increase the resiliency of coastal areas.
We characterize the spatial and temporal variability of winds, waves, vegetation, largescale coastal behaviour and foredune morphology through the analysis of a 30-year record of observations on the North Carolina, USA coast.  Results show that largescale coastal behaviour plays a dominant role in decadal scale variability of dunes at this location.

SPEAKERS: Dr Meg Palmsten, U.S. Naval Research Lab

Meg is an Oceanographer in the Sediment Dynamics Section at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) at Stennis Space Center. Her research includes: 1) making observations of sediment transport in riverine and nearshore environments using optical remote sensing methods and 2) developing data-driven probabilistic models for hydrodynamics and morphology with an emphasis on understanding model uncertainty. She presently leads projects developing probabilistic models for dune morphodynamics and sediment resuspension, investigating the dynamics of an engineered estuarine and nearshore environment, and developing a nearshore data assimilation/morphological forecasting system and a nowcasting system for munitions mobility.

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