Spotlight on sediment management sustainability goals

USACE has set a sediment management sustainability goal to beneficially place 70 percent of dredged sediment to support navigation, flood risk management and environmental missions.

Despite this goal, only a tiny fraction of dredged sediment is placed in the coastal nearshore or beach zone, said the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC).

To achieve this goal, USACE practitioners need a suite of rapidly deployable coastal models to evaluate beach nourishment design alternatives that beneficially use dredged sediment, according to ERDC.

The historical models used to evaluate coastal beneficial use projects required significant improvements to capture sediment transport in the nearshore, swash zone and aeolian (wind-blown) transport on the subaerial beach.

Advances in physics-based models improve the reliability of predicted responses from Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBF) to nourishment strategies.