Search results for ""author neville burt""

The very word "barrages" is evocative. In the context of tidal waters it conjures up pictures of massive structures and environmental change. Barrages represent the engineer s success where King Canute failed to stop the tide coming in. They are hardly a new concept as man has for centuries tried to harness tidal power to drive his machinery, but a new breed of barrage is emerging, aimed at regenerating depressed urban areas. One of the primary aims of such schemes has been to drown "unsightly" mud flats. If you happen to be a wading bird used to enjoying the worms that live in intertidal mud flats you may not share that perspective. Indeed, many people today tend to side with the birds, fish and other ecological wonders and often find themselves in conflict with the promoters of a barrage scheme. How far are their fears justified? Are the negative impacts as bad as some people have predicted or even worse? How accurately can the impacts be predicted by scientific methods? Can the barrage be designed and its operation controlled to mitigate any negative effects as well as to optimise its primary objective? These issues are addressed in this book by authors drawing on their experience of research and practical experience.

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There is an alarming tendency today to assume that something calculated by a computer must be correct, yet the phrase 'garbage in, garbage out' (gigo) is possibly nowhere more (generally) appropriate than in computer modelling of cohesive sediment behaviour. The behaviour of 'mud' is highly complex and one only needs to look at a sample under a microscope to see why - the variety of particle shapes, not to mention the presence of living organisms, make it a substance with properties virtually unique to its situation which even change with time. For many years most researchers tended to avoid it, preferring to study sand and gravel, but a dedicated few tackled it and found a forum for discussing their work in the first Cohesive Sediments Workshop in Florida in 1980. The workshop met about every three years resulting in publication of some of the most definitive papers on the subject. By 1994 it was time to recognise the extensive research being carried on in Europe by holding the workshop in that region. Intercoh '94 (the 4th Nearshore and Estuarine Cohesive Sediment Transport Conference) drew together about 100 of the world's leading researchers in the field. The resulting papers, presented in this volume, truly represent the definitive state of the art on the measurement and modelling of mud properties today.

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