Human interventions and climate change on the West African sand river

The West African coast consists of a narrow low-lying coastal strip maintained by sediment from rivers that is transported along the coast by waves and currents: a “sand river”. Today, however, much of the fluvial sand is retained behind river dams and the flow is interrupted at several locations by jetties. The sandy coastal barrier is therefore eroding almost everywhere. The situation is already critical and it is likely to worsen in the future due to climate change. This study set up a quantitative and consistent large-scale sediment budget study using a unique numerical modelling framework for the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Benin. The numerical modelling framework was based on Delft3D and UNIBEST-CL+.