We Visited for You

The Marine Sandwave and River Dune Dynamics II (MARID) workshop was held in Enschede, The Netherlands on the 1st and 2nd April 2004 The idea to organise workshops dedicated to bring together researchers and end-users in the field of marine sandwave dynamics was proposed in 1998 during a meeting of the North Sea Hydrographic Commission and the first workshop was held in Lille (France). One of the main outputs of this workshop was that several aspects, especially modelling, were in a quite dynamic development, necessitating a follow up in order to monitor the progress of the last 4 years.

A large number of speakers gave high-quality presentations of their specific fields of interest, such as dynamics and morphology of river dunes, parameter estimation and deformation analysis of sand waves and mega ripples, incipient grain transport and pattern formation, long term evolution of sandwaves, grain size sorting on tidal sandbanks etc. etc. Speakers came from a large number of countries (UK, Canada, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, USA and Germany.

A very interesting seminar, high quality technical papers of which most of the contents fall outside the scope of the daily workload of the average hydrographer.
However, certain results, such as the grain size composition in large sand waves and the formation of vertical currents related to marine sandwaves are certainly applicable to our field of operation, for example dredging operations and sediment transport monitoring, current measurements etc. It was also nice to see some other results from the modern survey techniques such as multibeam, ADCP’s and the various bottom mounted sensors, used in our industry.

Further Reading

• Marine Sandwaves and River Dune Dynamics II, International Workshop, April 1-2 2004, University Twente, The Netherlands. Proceedings Hulscher S., Garlan T., Idier D. Ed., 352 pages. ISBN: 2-11-088355-3
  
• http://marid2004.utwente.nl/