IHE Delft 💧 Alumni Online Seminar ‘Understanding Mangrove Coasts for a Climate-Resilient Future’

About the seminar
The world’s coasts are at risk, with climate change making severe weather events that pound coastal communities more frequent and fiercer. Mangrove forests offer protection, but they, too, are vulnerable to human-made actions. Many need to be restored, others protected.

Sebrian Beselly Putra recently was awarded a PhD for research that can help mangrove restoration succeed. He will present the main outcomes of his research, which involved developing a method to model mangrove forests’ trajectory and wetland development. His promotor, Dano Roelvink, and co-promotor, Mick van der Wegen, will discuss developments in mangrove and coastal research.

Programme:
· Mick van der Wegen: Importance of mangroves and assessment of sea level rise impacts
· Sebrian Beselly Putra: Simulating mangrove-mudflat dynamics with a hybrid eco-hydro-morphodynamic model – optimizing mangroves’ carbon sequestration potential
· Dano Roelvink: Towards large-scale, long-term modelling of mangrove coastlines.

About the Speakers
Dano Roelvink has 36 years of experience in coastal engineering and research. He has participated as team member and as project manager in a number of major consultancy projects related to coastal morphology. He has managed the development of the Delft3D model system for two- and three-dimensional simulation of waves, currents, water quality, ecology and morphodynamics, and contributed significantly to the morphological part of this system. He has been actively involved in the EU-sponsored MaST-G6M and MaST-G8M, SASME, COAST3D, DELOS and MICORE research projects on coastal morphodynamics and recently participated in Risc-KIT.

Mick van der Wegen combines high-level academic research with an extensive (inter)national network and a strong education track record. His major field of expertise relates to estuarine dynamics, morphodynamic modeling and integrated coastal zone management. Mick joined IHE Delft as a researcher after his MSc, and in 2010 earned his PhD degree entitled “Modeling morphodynamic evolution in alluvial estuaries” from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in 2010. In 2012, he became an Associate Professor at IHE Delft. He also works for Deltares since.

Sebrian Beselly Putra is Lecturer and Researcher in Coastal and Urban Hazards and Risk at IHE Delft. His specialization is in coastal eco-morphodynamics, coastal eco-geomorphological modelling, interactions of mangroves and coastal ecosystems, and coastal remote sensing analysis. Sebrian completed his PhD degree at IHE Delft and TU Delft. In his thesis ‘The Mangrove Tale: Mechanistic Modelling of Mangrove-Eco-Geomorphic Interactions’ he developed a better understanding of complex eco-geomorphic interactions and feedback processes in the evolution of coastal mangrove environments. He used a newly developed model (DFMFON) to resolve the feedback processes between hydro-morphodynamic forcing (waves, tides, river flow, sediment supply, salinity, and morphodynamics) and mangrove life stages ranging from (the dispersal of) propagules to the development of seedlings and saplings into mature trees. Read an interview with Sebrian.