Overview and effectiveness of interventions in the Ems Estuary

The Ems Estuary is considered to be too turbid. Therefore in both the Netherlands (the ED2050 programme) and Germany (the Masterplan Ems 2050) interventions have been planned or executed (jointly under the ‘Strategy for an ecological sediment management’ umbrella) to improve the hydromorphological conditions, especially reducing turbidity. All these interventions aim at reducing the turbidity and/or improve ecological gradients. Deltares was asked by the ED2050 programme to answer a number of questions related to interventions and turbidity. These questions include (1) What are physically realistic and practically relevant interventions? (2) What is the approximate impact of these measures on the turbidity? (3) What is the approximate impact of parallel interventions on the turbidity? (4) What is the impact of sediment extraction on the long-term development of the Wadden Sea? and (5) What are important knowledge gaps? These questions have been answered, within the limits of the available state of knowledge, using earlier studies reported in technical reports and scientific papers.