Keywords

shoreline erosion, coastal erosion, education, waves, sediment, habitat, vegetation, oyster, seagrass, mangrove

Description

Experimental hydraulic flumes are important research instruments used to test hydrodynamic and sediment transport processes in research laboratories. However, flumes can also be powerful tools to visualize erosion, which can be effectively leveraged towards environmental education and community engagement. Students from the Ecohydraulics Laboratory at UCF have designed a novel educational flume to engage nonscientific communities in the topic of shoreline erosion. The mobile flume is designed to go almost anywhere, is affordable to build, simple to operate, and flexible to engage diverse audiences (e.g. from very young to adult), yet preserves the rigor of critical scientific processes. The dual-chamber design with erodible bed allows for comparison of different habitat types side-by-side. For instance, observers can watch different erosion rates progress in real time along a hardened slope vs. within a structurally complex, biodiverse shoreline. With this documentation, anyone can learn about how to build and operate their own Shoreline Defense Force educational wave flume!

Date Created

Fall 2023

Type

Documentation

College

Academic Affairs

Type

article

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.