An Integrated Marine Data Collection for the German Bight – Part I: Subaqueous Geomorphology and Surface Sedimentology

Abstract

Abstract. The German Bight located within the central North Sea is a hydro- and morphodynamically highly complex system of estuaries, barrier islands and part of the world’s largest coherent tidal flats, the Wadden Sea. To identify and understand challenges faced by coastal stakeholders, such as harbor operators or governmental agencies, to maintain waterways and employ numerical models for further analyses, it is imperative to have a consistent data base for both bathymetry and surface sedimentology. Current commercial and public data products are insufficient in spatial and temporal 15 resolution and coverage for recent analyses methods. Thus, this first part of a two-part publication series of the German joint project EasyGSH-DB describes annual bathymetric digital terrain models in a 10 m gridded resolution for the German North Sea coast and German Bight from 1996 to 2016 (Sievers et al., 2020a, https://doi.org/10.48437/02.2020.K2.7000.0001), as well as surface sedimentological models of discretized cumulative grain size distribution functions for 1996, 2006 and 2016 on 100 m grids (Sievers et al., 2020b, https://doi.org/10.48437/02.2020.K2.7000.0005). Furthermore, basic morphodynamic and sedimentological 20 processing analyses, such as the estimation of e.g. bathymetric stability or surface maps of sedimentological parameters, are provided (Sievers et al., 2020a, 2020b, see respective download links).

An integrated marine data collection for the German Bight – Part 2: Tides, salinity, and waves (1996–2015)

“…Dutch freshwater discharge was obtained from https://waterinfo.rws.nl/ (last access: 7 June 2021), and runoff data for the German freshwater discharge were requested from the responsible German authorities BfG, WSV, and BSH. Annual bathymetries from Sievers et al (2021;e.g., Fig. 4) are interpolated on the computational subgrid annually within the EPZ (i.e., Fig.…”

“…For tidal characteristic and harmonic analysis presented hereafter, the program NCANAL-YSE (https://wiki.baw.de/en/index.php/NCANALYSE, last access: 7 June 2021) is applied from 1 January to 31 December for each modeled year. Note that the nodal f -u correction of tidal constituents has been disabled in the harmonic analysis because of limited applicability in the German Bight (Hagen et al, 2021).…”

“…Data products include sea surface elevation, depth-averaged current velocity, bed shear stress, depth-averaged salinity, wave parameters, and wave spectra in the German Bight at a high spatial (1000 m by 1000 m) and temporal (20 min intervals) resolution. Numerical modeling at this temporal and spatial scale has become possible with the availability of high-resolution bathymetry (Sievers et al, 2021), surface sediments, reanalyzed meteorology (Bollmeyer et al, 2015), and input from global modeling products such as FES. An in-depth description of data-based products can be found in the accompanying paper of Sievers et al (2021).…”

“…Numerical modeling at this temporal and spatial scale has become possible with the availability of high-resolution bathymetry (Sievers et al, 2021), surface sediments, reanalyzed meteorology (Bollmeyer et al, 2015), and input from global modeling products such as FES. An in-depth description of data-based products can be found in the accompanying paper of Sievers et al (2021). In Sievers et al (2021), we describe the calculation of annual bathymetry and decadal surface sediment data from observations and discuss limitations, data sources, and accuracy.…”

“…An in-depth description of data-based products can be found in the accompanying paper of Sievers et al (2021). In Sievers et al (2021), we describe the calculation of annual bathymetry and decadal surface sediment data from observations and discuss limitations, data sources, and accuracy. Stakeholders from scientific, commercial, and governmental communities have been involved to ensure optimal usability of our data collection.…”