EIA of dredging and land reclamation

The objective of this project was to model the regional and local scale hydrodynamics in the entire Arabian Gulf basin with a particular focus on selected sites in the 6 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Member States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE). We used the unstructured-mesh hydrodynamic model SLIM to simulate the ocean circulation in the entire Gulf with a high spatial and temporal resolution description of the ocean circulation around dredging and reclamation sites in the 6 GCC countries.

The resulting simulation results were then used to simulate the dispersal of sediment plumes from reclamation and dredging sites, and estimate their potential impact on sensitive receptor sites nearby. For each site, we considered different types of sediments ranging from fine silt to coarser sand. We assessed the potential for these plumes to reach ecologically-sensitive sites such as coral reefs or conservation areas.