Page 17 - CBT 2018
P. 17
DELTAS
Coastlines are disappearing at alarming rates; for example, in the region of
the Mississippi River delta in the Gulf
of Mexico, it is estimated that land
loss rates are in excess of 40 square kilometers per year. One way in which this land loss might be reversed is to breach the levees on the river and allow the formation of sedimentary deltas. In such a scenario it is critical to understand the dynamics of the delta’s growth. To generate this understanding, a computational model for building a river delta was constructed. This model was based on random walk processes that established physical rules on how incoming packages of water, sand, and mud are deposited. Results from the model reproduce key delta building dynamics and clearly demonstrate how the shape of the delta changes as the fraction of mud in the sediment mix
is increased. [14,15]
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