Cemeteries in Europe as places of remembrance and memory landscapes

Los cementerios europeos han sido lugares de recuerdo durante siglos. Con su estructura espacial, sus monumentos y sus edificios funerarios nos informan sobre los modos cambiantes de tratar con los difuntos. Los lugares de enterramiento muestran una expresión material del sentimiento de duelo, cuyo cambio a lo largo de la historia es capaz de mostrar las múltiples interrelaciones entre muerte, sociedad y memoria. Reúnen biografías, mentalidades, ideología, relaciones de genero, estructuras y jerarquías sociales, así como elementos históricos regionales. Los cementerios son paisajes clásicos de la memoria, como ilustra el ejemplo de los cementerios europeos de época burguesa –también en aspectos políticos–, los cementerios militares y los cementerios marítimos especiales de la costa del Mar del Norte. European cemeteries have been places of remembrance for centuries. With their spatial structure, their sepulchral monuments and buildings, they report on the changing ways of dealing with the deceased. The burial sites give a materialized expression to the feeling of mourning, the change of which in the course of history is able to show the manifold interrelationships between death, society and memory. They store biographies, mentalities, ideologies, gender relations, social structures and hierarchies as well as regional historical specifics. Cemeteries are classical memory landscapes, as will be explained using the example of European cemeteries in the bourgeois era –also under political aspects–, military cemeteries and special maritime cemeteries of the North Sea coast.

Reconstruction of wind and surge of the 1906 storm tide at the German North Sea Coast

Storm tides represent a major threat to the low-lying German North Sea coast. Knowledge of extremes is essential for the design of reliable and robust coastal defences. A storm tide that occurred on 12–13 March 1906 along the German Bight coastline still represents one of the strongest events on record. For this event, detailed knowledge of atmospheric and hydrodynamic conditions is still lacking. To assess the potential impact of such an event on today’s coastline, century-long atmospheric reanalysis data together with a manual synoptic reconstruction based on archived weather data were used to drive a tide-surge model and to simulate water levels during the event. Sensitivity experiments were performed to estimate potential amplification of water levels that could have been caused by different time lags between the storm and the astronomical tide. Comparison between the model results and the limited available observational data indicated, that the water levels could be reasonably reconstructed using wind fields from the manual synoptic approach and some of the reanalysis ensemble members. The amplification potential was found to be low because the storm occurred during spring tide and shifts in the phase of the astronomic tide yielded only small changes in total water levels. To summarize, if pressure data are available at relevant locations, historical storm surges can be simulated with reanalysis products and also with a manual synoptic reconstruction.

Coastal atmospheres: the peninsula of the blessed and the art of noticing

In this article, I explore the atmosphere of Dangast, a coastal village located at the Jadebusen, a huge bay at the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. To write about atmospheres means evoking a specific forcefield, which is different from observing and analyzing an object from a distance. In the first part, I write about my own experience of the coastal atmosphere by “looking around rather than ahead,” as Tsing (2015) defined the art of noticing. Based on his paintings, on literature, and interviews, I show in the second part how a local artist, the painter Franz Radziwill, made the specific atmosphere of Dangast explicit. Finally, I follow a citizens’ initiative on their way to preserve the specific atmosphere of this coastal village as an artists’ place. In doing so, I provide a detailed insight into the atmospheres of democracy, which define how transitions take place and decisions are taken locally. In the conclusion, I argue that the focus on coastal atmospheres is a way to transcend the boundaries between nature and culture and to undermine the teleological argument of growth and development which more often than not shape coastal politics.

Using machine learning and beach cleanup data to explain litter quantities along the Dutch North Sea coast

Coastlines potentially harbor a large part of litter entering the oceans such as plastic waste. The relative importance of the physical processes that influence the beaching of litter is still relatively unknown. Here, we investigate the beaching of litter by analyzing a data set of litter gathered along the Dutch North Sea coast during extensive beach cleanup efforts between the years 2014–2019. This data set is unique in the sense that data is gathered consistently over various years by many volunteers (a total of 14,000), on beaches which are quite similar in substrate (sandy). This makes the data set valuable to identify what environmental variables might play an important role in the beaching process, and to explore the variability of beach litter. We investigate this by fitting a random forest machine learning regression model to the observed litter concentrations. We find that especially tides play an important role, where an increasing tidal variability and tidal height lead to less litter found on beaches. Relatively straight and exposed coastlines appear to accumulate more litter. The regression model indicates that transport of litter through the marine environment is also important in explaining beach litter variability. By understanding what processes cause the accumulation of litter on the coast, recommendations can be given for more effective removal of litter from the marine environment. We estimate that 16,000–31,400 kilograms (95 % confidence interval) of litter are located on the 365 kilometers of Dutch North Sea coastline.

What can idealized storm surge simulations tell us about worst case scenarios?

<p>The potential impacts of extreme sea level events are becoming more apparent to the public and policy makers alike. As the magnitude of these events are expected to increase due to climate change, and increased coastal urbanization results in ever increasing stakes in the coastal zones, the need for risk assessments is growing too.</p><p>The physical conditions that generate extreme sea levels are highly dependent on site specific conditions, such as bathymetry, tidal regime, wind fetch and the shape of the coastline. For a low-lying country like Denmark, which consists of a peninsula and islands that partition off the semi-enclosed Baltic Sea from the North Sea, a better understanding of how the local sea level responds to wind forcing is urgently called for.</p><p>We here present a map for Denmark that shows the most efficient wind directions for generating extreme sea levels, for a total of 70 locations distributed all over the country’s coastlines. The maps are produced by conducting simulations with a high resolution, 3D-ocean model, which is used for operational storm surge modelling at the Danish Meteorological Institute. We force the model with idealized wind fields that maintain a fixed wind speed and wind direction over the entire model domain. Simulations are conducted for one wind speed and one wind direction at a time, generating ensembles of a set of wind directions for a fixed wind speed, as well as a set of wind speeds for a fixed wind direction, respectively.</p><p>For each wind direction, we find that the maximum water level at a given location increases linearly with the wind speed, and the slope values show clear spatial patterns, for example distinguishing the Danish southern North Sea coast from the central or northern North Sea Coast. The slope values are highest along the southwestern North Sea coast, where the passage of North Atlantic low pressure systems over the shallow North Sea, as well as the large tidal range, result in a much larger range of variability than in the more sheltered Inner Danish Waters. However, in our simulations the large fetch of the Baltic Sea, in combination with the funneling effect of the Danish Straits, result in almost as high water levels as along the North Sea coast.</p><p>Although the wind forcing is completely synthetic with no spatial and temporal structure of a real storm, this idealized approach allows us to systematically investigate the sea level response at the boundaries of what is physically plausible. We evaluate the results from these simulations by comparison to peak water levels from a 58 year long, high resolution ocean hindcast, with promising agreement.</p>

MODELLING THE EFFECT OF COASTLINE ORIENTATION ON STORM EROSION AT THE SYLT ISLAND, NORTH SEA

The effect of coastline orientation on storm erosion was investigated using a hybrid numerical modelling approach (Delft3D and XBeach) on the convex-shape North Sea coast of Sylt. Storm impacts were simulated using different severity events occurring in a cluster and alone. Both models predicted reasonable wave dynamics (RMSE of wave spectral density 0.45 m2/Hz). XBeach resulted in higher erosion above MSL than Delft3D. High severity events approached the coast from the SW- NW sector (i.e., dominant storm approach on this coast). The convex-shape of the coastline provided however different storm landfall at individual locations along the coast. The coastal stretch from the apex to the North showed high vulnerability to storm erosion with the highest erosion at the apex, when the storm events approach from the northwesterly directions. This coastal stretch draws attention in the application of management strategies to withstand the storm erosion.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/JP7K-5itPnI