Dutch Scientists Transplant Real Salt Marsh into Wave Machine to Test Coastal Resilience
Dutch researchers transplanted 306 square meters of real salt marsh from the Wadden Sea into the Delta Flume, the world's largest wave generator, to test its resilience against extreme storm surges. After 21 hours of waves reaching 2 meters in height, the marsh substrate lost only 7 millimeters of sediment, though above-ground vegetation suffered significant damage. The study, published in Nature, suggests that while salt marshes are less effective at attenuating high-energy waves than low-energy ones, they offer a flexible, self-repairing alternative to static concrete dikes for hybrid coastal defense strategies.