Fettweis, M.

Toorman, E.

Vanlede, J.

English

Open Marine Archive

EDITORIAL
Editorial to the topical collection INTERCOH 2015
Erik A. Toorman1 & Michael Fettweis2 & Joris Vanlede3
Received: 19 December 2018 /Accepted: 21 December 2018 /Published online: 1 February 2019
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
The 13th edition of the International Conference on Cohesive
Sediment Transport Processes (INTERCOH 2015) has been
held from 7 to 14 September 2015 at the University of Leuven
(KU Leuven) in Leuven, Belgium. INTERCOH provides an
international forum for scientists and engineers facing chal-
lenges posed by the presence of cohesive sediments (Bmud^)
in the aquatic environment.
Even though for the first time organized in Belgium, it
was not the first international meeting of this kind in
Belgium. Twenty-five years earlier, in November 1990,
an International Workshop on Cohesive Sediments, enti-
tled Towards a definition of Bmud,^ was organized by the
Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences in Brussels,
in collaboration with many national partners, under the
chair of Prof. Stanislas Wartel. This very likely triggered
the further internationalization of Prof. Ashish Mehta’s
workshops in the USA (started in 1981), resulting in the
first edition under the title INTERCOH, which was orga-
nized in 1994 for the first time outside the US by HR
Wallingford in the UK.
For further information on INTERCOH, visit the website
www.intercoh.org.
Belgium, located at the heart of Europe, is small, but the
occurrence of mud in the coastal zone and in the ports of
Antwerp and Zeebrugge and their access channels has initiat-
ed applied and fundamental research as early as the end of the
nineteenth century. The characterization of marine deposits in
the Belgian coastal zone was initiated by hydrographers from
the Ministry of Public Works, i.e., Stessels (1866), for
hydrographical mapping and Van Mierlo (1899, 1908) during
the construction of the port of Zeebrugge between 1899 and
1903, and by Gilson (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural
Sciences) in the framework of marine ecosystem research
(Gilson 1900, 1928). A revival of sediment research came
with the studies on mud dynamics in the Scheldt Estuary by
Peters at the Hydraulics Research Laboratory (now Flanders
Hydraulics Research) since 1964 (e.g., Peters et al. 1965; see
potamology.com), and occurred during the large-scale
BProject Sea^ (1970–1976), when also SPM dynamics was
investigated in the southern bight of the North Sea using nu-
merical models and in situ measurements (Nihoul and
Gullentops 1976). The major extensions of the ports
Zeebrugge in the 1980s have triggered the most recent cohe-
sive sediment research line in Belgium, a challenge taken up
by Prof. Berlamont of the KU Leuven (e.g., Berlamont 1989).
This work resulted in the establishment of a dedicated research
unit on fundamental and applied sediment mechanics. The
engineering challenges associated with marine construction
and dredging operations and their impact on the marine and
estuarine environment has led to further development of co-
hesive sediment related research at the Royal Belgian Institute
of Natural Sciences (RBINS) and at Flanders Hydraulics
Research (FHR), a division of the Flemish Ministry of
Public Works. At RBINS, the Directorate Natural
Environment (comprising the former Management Unit of
the Mathematical Model of the North Sea) is responsible for
the monitoring and modeling of the Belgian part of the North
Sea. They developed the modeling system COHERENS
(http://odnature.naturalsciences.be/coherens/), which has a
wide international users group, and have gained a lot of
expertise in in situ measurements and their analysis. FHR
contributes to model improvements for their applications to
waterway and harbor management (especially the Scheldt
Estuary and the Belgian Coast) and is one of the forerunners
in research on defining and measuring the nautical depth in
muddy areas. Belgium is also the home to two of the largest
Responsible Editor: Jörg-Olaf Wolff
* Erik A. Toorman
erik.toorman@kuleuven.be
1 Hydraulics Division, Department of Civil Engineering, KU Leuven,
Leuven, Belgium
2 Directorate Natural Environment, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural
Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
3 Flanders Hydraulics Research, Flemish Ministry of Public Works,
Antwerp, Belgium
Ocean Dynamics (2019) 69:405–407
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-018-01244-0
dredging companies in the world. This explains why the small
cohesive sediments research community in Belgium has
evolved to one of the major contributors to advances in
cohesive sediments science.
The Topical Collection INTERCOH 2015 comprises 11
articles which cover a wide variety of topics.
The first paper, entitled BMonitoring and characterisation
of sand-mud sedimentation processes^ by Cuthbertson et al.
(2016), describes a series of settling column tests which are
conducted to investigate the hindered settling and initial bed
consolidation phases of a range of sand-clay mixtures to de-
termine the parametric conditions under which bed segrega-
tion occurs. A new, non-invasive, electrical resistivity mea-
surement technique is employed to capture both temporal
and spatial changes in the density, porosity, and composition
of the evolving sand-clay bed deposits, complimented by
time-lapsed images of the sedimentation process within the
column. The results show that the formation of segregated
(sand-clay) bed layers with bed deposits is largely controlled
by the initial fractional composition. A polydisperse hindered
settling model is successfully validated with the experimental
data, providing new insights into mixed (sand-clay) sedimen-
tation processes.
BInfluence of bottom trawling on sediment resuspension in
the BGrande-Vasière^ area (Bay of Biscay, France)^ by
Mengual et al. (2016) analyzes optical and acoustic measure-
ments made in the water column in an intensively trawled
coastal area. Results show that trawling resuspension (mainly
due to the scraping action of doors) can become dominant
during the fishing high season (i.e., up to several times the
natural one in summer). In addition, the contribution of
trawling-induced resuspension is shown to increase with wa-
ter depth, because of the rapid decay of wave effects. The
seasonal evolution of the respective contributions for erosion
(mainly trawling and waves) could be mapped for the whole
study area.
BFloc size distributions of suspended kaolinite in an advec-
tion transport dominated tank: measurements and modeling^
by Shen and Maa (2017) describes a one-dimensional longi-
tudinal (1-DL) flocculation model along a streamtube, based
on solving the population balance equation to find the floc size
distributions (FSD) by using the quadrature method of mo-
ments. The model is validated with a laboratory experiment of
pump-driven recirculating flow in a cylindrical tank. The flow
field is measured with ADV and the flocs sizes determined
from camera image processing. The FSDs as well as their
representative sizes are efficiently and reasonably simulated
by this 1-DL model.
BThe impact of disposal of fine-grained sediments from
maintenance dredging works on SPM concentration and fluid
mud in and outside the harbor of Zeebrugge^ by Fettweis et al.
(2016) investigates the hypothesis that a significant part of
disposed sediments recirculates back to the dredging places
and that a relocation of the disposal site to another location at
equal distance to the dredging area would reduce this recircu-
lation. The conclusion from a 1-year field study is that the
SPM concentration decreases after relocation of the disposal
site but indicate stronger (first half of field experiment) or
weaker (second half of field experiment) effects that are, how-
ever, strongly influenced by the environmental conditions.
BSurface suspended particulate matter concentration in the
Taiwan Strait during summer and winter monsoons^ by Yu
et al. (2016) aims at using MODIS satellite images to investi-
gate how local sediment sources in addition to the seasonality
in wind, oceanographic currents, and waves influence the
suspended particulate matter (SPM) dynamics in the Taiwan
Strait. The data analysis reveals a seasonal pattern of high
SPM concentrations in winter, low in summer, and only
short-term effects of typhoons.
BUncertainty in complex three-dimensional sediment trans-
port models: equifinality in a model application of the Ems
Estuary, the Netherlands^ by van Maren and Cronin (2016)
investigates the effect of equifinality (i.e., different combina-
tions of model input parameters leading to the same result) on
predictive model capabilities with a complex three-
dimensional sediment transport model of a turbid estuary
which is subject to several human interventions. The comput-
ed effect of two human interventions (offshore dredged mate-
rial disposal and tidal channel profile restoration) was found to
be only weakly influenced by the various equifinal model
settings that were tested, strengthening confidence in the nu-
merical model predictions.
BA parameter model for dredge plume sediment source
terms,^ by Decrop et al. (2017), describes a new gray-box
model which allows for fast simulations of the near-field be-
havior of overflow dredging plumes. A new source term of
fine sediments is implemented in a hydrodynamic model to
simulate the fine sediment dispersion in large-scale applica-
tions. To allow for correct representation of overflow plume
dispersion in a real-time forecasting model, a fast assessment
of the nearfield behavior is needed. A semi-analytical param-
eter model has been developed that reproduces the near-field
sediment dispersion obtained with a detailed fine-scale CFD
model in a relatively accurate way.
BA regression approach to the mapping of bio-physical
characteristics of surface sediment using in situ and airborne
hyperspectral acquisitions^ by Ibrahim et al. (2017) investi-
gates the use of two regression models to quantify sediment
properties instead of classifying them.Multiple regression and
support vector regression (SVR) are used in this study for the
retrieval of bio-physical variables of intertidal surface sedi-
ment of the IJzermonding, a Belgian nature reserve.
Sediment property maps are successfully obtained using the
models and hyperspectral imagery where SVR is used with all
bands achieves the best performance.
406 Ocean Dynamics (2019) 69:405–407
BOn the hindered settling of sand-mud suspensions^ by
Spearman andManning (2017) examines the hindered settling
behavior of monodisperse suspensions in order to create a
framework for polydisperse hindered settling that works for
both non-cohesive and cohesive suspensions. The model is
shown to reproduce the hindered settling of a variety of dif-
ferent sediment mixtures whilst reducing the extent of empir-
icism often associated with the modeling of polydisperse hin-
dered settling of mud/sand mixtures.
BAn examination of the rheology of flocculated clay
suspensions^ by Spearman (2017) is concerned with estab-
lishing a rheological framework for the range of sediment
concentrations from the yield point to Newtonian flow. An
equation is proposed which has the ability to match the equi-
librium and time-dependent viscous rheology of a wide range
of suspensions of different concentration and mineralogy.
The last paper, entitled BErosion characteristics and hori-
zontal variability for small erosion depths in the Sacramento-
San Joaquin River Delta, California, USA^ by Schoellhamer
et al. (2017), tests the hypothesis that observed erosion rates in
microcosm experiments indicate horizontal heterogeneity.
The authors develop a simple numerical model that includes
horizontal heterogeneity, use it to develop an artificial time
series of suspended-sediment concentration in an erosion mi-
crocosm, and then analyze that time series assuming horizon-
tal homogeneity. The latter analysis reproduced the original
profile of critical shear stress, but the erosion rate coefficient
increased with eroded mass, similar to the empirical data,
confirming the small-depth erosion hypothesis. A linear mod-
el of critical shear stress and eroded mass is proposed to sim-
ulate small-depth erosion, assuming that the applied and crit-
ical shear stresses quickly reach equilibrium.
Many more topics were presented during the conference.
The program of INTERCOH 2015 consisted of 70 oral pre-
sentations and 36 posters. The INTERCOH 2015 Book of
Abstracts is available online at the website of the Flanders
Marine Institute (VLIZ) at http://www.vliz.be/en/imis?
module=ref&refid=249519, and can be downloaded in full
or by individual abstract. It gives an impression of the
scientific questions and practical problems that are faced by
scientists and engineers today. Sediment research is difficult;
cohesive sediments behave even more complex. Some of the
questions are (very) old and have not found adequate solutions
for many years.
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Decrop B, De Mulder T, Toorman E, Sas M (2017) A parameter model
for dredge plume sediment source terms. Ocean Dyn 67(1):137–146
Fettweis M, Baeye M, Cardoso C, Dujardin A (2016) The impact of
disposal of fine-grained sediments from maintenance dredging
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Ocean Dynamics (2019) 69:405–407 407


Editorial to the topical collection INTERCOH 2015

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