Wave Attenuation by Heterospecific Coastal Vegetation-Modelling through Response Surface Methodology on Synthetic Plant Meadows

Understanding of the interactions between wave and aquatic vegetation is gaining importance mainly due to plant-induced wave attenuation phenomenon for developing sustainable coastal management systems. Most of the wave–vegetation interaction studies focus mainly on monotypic coastal plant meadows; however, studies on heterospecific plant meadows are limited. The present study is aimed to understand the heterospecific vegetation–wave interactions through a three-level, four-factor response surface methodology using wave flume under controlled conditions. Heterospecific seagrass species, Halophila spinulosa and Halophila ovalis are simulated physically by means of synthetic plant mimics to develop a relationship between wave attenuation (E%) and four direct control factors, viz. water depth (h), wave period (T), plant density (N) and bed roughness factor (f) through an empirical model. The developed model was tested using analysis of variance technique, and analysed for main and interaction effects of the studied parameters. The results showed that all the considered parameters are significantly effective on E% individually as well as in combination. All the model-based results were compared with a new set of experimental data and tested for validation.