Sediment budgets are the basis for sediment management, but making budgets is at present more an art than a science. Furthermore, budgets do not show where eroded sediment is going and where accreted sediment comes from. I am developing a new, objective method that will resolve the partitioning of tidal basins into elements that show coherent behaviour between subsequent bathymetries. This will enable me to calculate detailed sediment budgets of estuaries and tidal basins – namely, the Wadden Sea and the Western Scheldt - and provide validation datasets for modelling.

This is WP 1.2 of the WadSED project, and is a collaboration with Deltares.