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Hurricanes are one of the primary threats to the Texas coastal environment and economy. They generate large wave and storm surges that have caused much damage on the Texas coast in the past. Understanding both the hydrodynamic processes that damage coastal habitats and hurricane hazard and risk are critical to preserve coastal vegetation and quantify its benefits to coastal storm protection. The goal of this project is to quantify the impact of wave attenuation and wave refraction as well as the development of coherent structures in marsh fringes and the formation of a rip current system over wetlands on storm protection. The 3D Shallow Water Wave Basin at Texas A&M University hosted a series of large-scale experiments considering an idealized wetland model to pursue this goal. Study of the marsh geometry of the Texas coast was done in order to scale the experiments to the size of the Haynes Laboratory 3D-Water Wave Basin using a Froude and a Reynolds scalings. Particularly, averaged size and idealized shape of marsh segments in the area of Dalehite Cove in Galveston Bay were considered. Three sets of different wave conditions and water levels were tested to approximate different intensities of storm surge. Identical tests with both vegetated and non-vegetated marshes were run to compare the influence of the vegetation in storm conditions, and three different spacings between marsh segments were tested. In the basin, normally incident regular waves were generated at three water circulation structures. Data analysis allows the determination of the impact of discontinuous marsh segments on wave attenuation and wave refraction. Coherent structures such as rip current and the circulation pattern were analyzed to study the change in the flow field during passage of the waves. The experimental measurements were able to describe the wave transformations over the marsh segments. The influence of coastal wetlands was identified to affect the hydrodynamic process and reduce the total wave energy which is dissipated and redistributed by vegetation. The presence of the mounds induced an important decrease in the wave height, in addition to the damping of the waves by the vegetation stems. The variation in spatial coverage of the wetland model has been shown to highly affect the flow dynamics by generating offshore directed flow in the channel and onshore directed flow on the marsh mounds. This experimental approach provides a further understanding of flow dynamics by waves and surge in wetlands, at a large scale.

Hier werden einige Ansätze dargestellt, um das Schadenspotential von Stürmen abzuschätzen. Dabei sollen auch Aussagen zur Größenordnung des Schadens bei sehr unwahrscheinlichen Ereignissen gemacht werden. Die Naturgefahr Sturm wird getrennt nach außertropischen Zyklonen und Tornados betrachtet. Im ersten Fall werden empirische Verteilungsfunktion und mittels einer Markov Methode erzeugte synthetische Windreihen zur Abschätzung extremer Windgeschwindigkeiten genutzt. Eine Abschätzung der Böen wird durchgeführt und der Schaden mit Hilfe einer einfachen Beziehung zwischen Böengeschwindigkeit und Schaden ermittelt. Für die Abschätzung des Schadens im Falle eines Tornados werden von Dotzek angegebene Wahrscheinlichkeiten für Tornados in Deutschland und die Definition einer Tornadointensitätsskala als Schadensfunktion verwendet. / Some conceptions were explained, to estimate the risk of storm caused damages. The amount of damage by unlikely events is assessed. The natural hazard storm is considered separately for extratropical cyclones and tornadoes. Empirical distribution functions and synthetic series of wind speeds generated by a Markov chain model are used to derive the extreme wind speeds for cyclones. An estimation of gust speeds are performed and a simple relationship between gust speed and damage is applied. The likelihood of tornadoes to occur in Germany provided by Dotzek and the definition of an intensity scale are used to estimate the damage in the case of tornadoes.

Den 8:e januari 2005 inträffade en av de mest förödande stormarna i Sveriges historia då hundratusentals blev strömlösa och sju personer miste livet. Stormen Gudrun drabbade centrala Götaland värst och uppemot nio årsavverkningar skog beräknas ha fällts i vissa områden. Tidigare studier av stormen har genomförts på uppdrag av Skogsstyrelsen där resultaten visar att andel stormfälld skogsmarksareal var 11 % i värst drabbade Ljungby kommun, och ca 80 % av all den stormfällda skogen var gran, 18 % var tall och 2 % var löv. Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka mängden stormfälld skog efter stormen Gudrun genom analys av satellitburen fjärranalysdata. Även andelen stormfälld barr- och lövskog beräknades och resultaten jämfördes med de rapporter skrivna för Skogsstyrelsen. Även andelen stormfälld skog som är återbeskogad år 2016 beräknades. En förändringsanalys med satellitbilder från Landsat 5, tagna åren 2004 och 2005, genomfördes vilken inkluderade en skogsmask som skapades genom övervakad MLC-klassificering. Skogsmasken användes för att utesluta ointressanta områden i analyserna. Resultatet användes sedan för analys av andelen stormfälld barr- och lövskog samt för analys av återbeskogade områden år 2016. I den sistnämnda skapades en skogsmask med en satellitbild från Landsat 8 och som sedan användes i analysen. Resultaten från analyserna visar att ca 15,8 % av skogen stormfälldes, varav 78 % var barrskog och 13 % var lövskog. År 2016 hade ca 25 % av de stormfällda områdena återbeskogats. Noggrannheten på resultaten är generellt höga men skiljer sig trots detta väsentligt från resultaten i studierna som gjorts för Skogsstyrelsen. Anledningen till att resultaten skiljer sig åt kan bero på vilka satellitbilder och program som använts i analyserna, samt felkällor som uppkommit i samband med analyserna i denna studie. / On January 8th, 2005 one of the most devastating storms in Sweden’s history occurred, where hundreds of thousands became powerless and seven people lost their lives. The storm Gudrun hit central Götaland worst and nearly nine years’ professional felling of forests was estimated to have fallen in some areas. Previous studies of the storm were carried out on behalf of the Swedish Forest Agency, where the results show that the proportion of windthrown forest area was 11 % in the worst affected municipality of Ljungby. About 80 % of all damaged forests were spruce, 18 % were pine and 2 % were deciduous.                        The aim of this thesis is to investigate the amount of windthrown forest after the storm Gudrun through analysis of satellite remote sensing data. The proportion of windthrown coniferous and deciduous forest was calculated and the results were compared to the reports written on behalf of the Swedish Forest Agency. Furthermore, the proportion of reforested areas in 2016 was calculated. A change analysis based on satellite data from Landsat 5 from 2004 and 2005 was performed which included a forest mask created by supervised MLC classification. The forest mask was used to exclude uninteresting areas in the analyses. The result was then used for the analysis of the proportion of windthrown coniferous and deciduous forest and for the analysis of reforested areas in 2016. In the latter, a forest mask based on Landsat 8 data was used. The results from the analyses show that about 15.8 % of the forest was windthrown, of which 78 % were coniferous and 13 % were deciduous forest. By 2016, 25% of the windthrown areas had been reforested. The accuracy of the results is generally high, but despite this, it substantially differs from the results of earlier studies. The reason for this could be differences in satellite images and programs and additional error sources in conjunction with the analyses.