What
A better understanding of how Danish dune coasts reacted in the past to strong storms will contribute to give Danish stakeholders a strong basis for building reliable and sustainable coastal management and scenarios of adaptation to future climate-change.
Why
Danish coastal sedimentary systems evolve under the main influence of high-frequency forcing agents, such as storms. Studying past-storminess will contribute to define a more precise framework for understanding how coastal dunes behaved in the past in relation to storm events and sea-level changes and how Danish dune coasts may adapt in the near future.
How
Storm events will be rely both on the study of dune fields cliff sections as well as on the identification of aeolian sand layers in the inland lake/mire deposits of north western Denmark. Precise dating of aeolian sand deposits that document sand-drifts will allow us to move forward the study of paleo-storminess at the scale of the individual event, reaching a possibly decade-high temporal definition. Ultimately, this project will allow to test the models of atmospheric circulation and storminess models that have been proposed at the scale of the North Atlantic region.