Numerical modelling of sediment transport in the Nador lagoon (Morocco)

We present a numerical method for solving the sediment transport in the Nador lagoon. The lagoon is located on the Moroccan eastern coast and exchanges water flow with the Mediterranean sea. The governing equations consist of the well-established shallow water system including bathymetric forces, friction terms, coriolis and eddy-diffusion stresses. To model sediment transport we consider an Exner equation for morphological evolution and an advection-diffusion problem for the transport of suspended sediments. As a numerical solver, we apply an adaptive finite volume method using a centred-type discretization for the source terms. The proposed method can handle complex topography using unstructured grids and satisfies the conservation property. Several numerical results are presented to demonstrate the high resolution of the proposed method and to confirm its capability to provide accurate and efficient simulations for sediment transport in the Nador lagoon. (C) 2012 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.