By Chad Heimerl & Peter Wisniewski

Wave Run-up Prediction on Lake Mendota

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Swash is the motion of the water as it rises up and down on the shore.  The rising waves are called a constructive wave, depositing sediment onto the shore.  The falling waves are called destructive waves, removing larger amounts of sediment from the shore.  The max elevation that the rising wave reaches from the still water surface is called Wave Run-up.  Wave Run-up can be estimated based on wave height and wave length through various methods including:  CERC (1984), Hunt (1959), Mase (1992), Nielson and Hanslow (1991), and Ahrens and Seelig (1996).  The significant wave height can be related directly to wind speed through several methods, but for this study the SMB method is the one that will be used.  This study attempts make that correlation between wind speed, wave height and actual wave run-up.

There are two main ways that wave run-up R is typically reported, R and R2%.  Where, R represents the average run-up value, and R2% represents the upper 2% of the run-up values (typically referred to as the total run-up).