Integrated Modelling of the Belgian Coastal Zone

Abstract The management of the water resources in coastal or delta plains asks for an integrated modelling of the water system at a regional scale. In the SALMON project, detailed descriptions of the groundwater, river and marine domains are provided by coupling appropriate numerical models of these different sub-systems. The application of this three-fold model to the Scheldt and Belgian Coastal Zone reveals a marked river plume extending along the Belgian Coast with strong offshore gradients. This plume cannot be explained by the Eulerian residual transport velocity field but requires Lagrangian aspects to be taken into account. The computation of the age of this water mass shows that the different parts of the coastal zone are influenced by a discharge in the Grote Schijn River after a delay that varies between a few days (for the marine part of the estuary) to about 100 days (for the centre of the residual gyre). The computation shows also that the groundwater around Antwerp can also be contaminated by a pollution in the river but the resulting mass loss from the river does not lead to a significant reduction of the flux to the coastal zone.

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