Vanesa Magar

SSI fellow

Centre for Scientific Research and Postgraduate Education of Ensenada (CICESE)

Centre for Scientific Research and Postgraduate Education of Ensenada (CICESE)

Interests

Fluid mechanics, transport processes, wave propagation into the nearshore, seabed and shoreline evolution, climate change effects on coastal erosion and reliability of coastal structures.

Research

My main research interests focus on fluid mechanics, transport processes, wave propagation into the nearshore, seabed and shoreline evolution. All of these research interests are interrelated: ocean waves and currents interact with one another and as waves propagate into the shore they start interacting with the seafloor, affecting the wave direction and the wave height and shape. The wave and currents may lift sediment from the seabed and transport the sediment shoreward, seaward or alongshore through processes such as bedload transport, suspended load transport, and littoral drift. This in turn may cause the shoreline and the beaches to accrete or to erode.

My research aims to understand the different processes and how they affect the seabed and the shoreline evolution in the short and the long term. This is important since coastal erosion is likely to increase due to sea level rise and increased storminess linked to climate change. Coastal erosion leads to greater exposure of coastal and estuarine defences to storms, and hence to damage to these structures or to overtopping and flooding. Another aspect of my research is to extend current knowledge on reliability of coastal structures and how structural failure may occur under different wave loads, overtopping and erosion scenarios.

Check out contributions by and mentions of Vanesa Magar on www.software.ac.uk