ABSTRACT
Dai, H.; Ye, M., and Niedoroda, A.W., 2015. A model for simulating barrier island geomorphologic responses to future storm and sea-level rise impacts.
This paper presents the Barrier Island Profile (BIP) model, a new computer code developed to simulate barrier island morphological evolution over periods ranging between years and decades under the impacts of accelerated sea-level rise and long-term changes in the storm climate. The BIP model is a multiline model that represents the time-averaged dynamics of major barrier island features from front beach to backshore. Unique contributions of BIP to coastal modeling include a dynamic linking of interacting barrier island features and consideration of both future sea-level rise and storm climate impacts. The BIP model has the built-in capability of conducting Monte Carlo (MC) simulations to quantify predictive uncertainty caused by uncertainty in sea-level rise scenarios and storm parameters. For a series of barrier island cross-sections derived from the characteristics of Santa Rosa Island, Florida, BIP was used to evaluate their responses to random storm events and five potential accelerated rates of sea-level rise projected over a century. The MC simulations using BIP provide multiple realizations of possible barrier island morphologic responses and their statistics, such as mean and variance. The modeling results demonstrate that BIP is capable of simulating realistic patterns of barrier island profile evolution over the span of a century using relatively simple representations of time- and space-averaged processes with consideration of uncertainty of future climate impacts.
