Rota et al. (2026) Effect of Submerged Vegetation on Water Surface Geometry and Air–Water Momentum Transfer

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-01-10
• Authors: Giulio Foggi Rota, Alessandro Chiarini, Marco Edoardo Rosti
• DOI: 10.1029/2025gl119671

Research Groups

Not specified in abstract

Short Summary

This study employs fully resolved multiphase simulations to investigate how submerged vegetation modifies the water surface and its aerodynamic roughness, revealing that while vegetation regularizes the surface by suppressing deformations, it does not alter the equivalent roughness perceived by the overlying air flow.

Objective

• To understand how submerged vegetation modifies the water surface.
• To quantify the impact of submerged vegetation on the equivalent aerodynamic roughness of the water surface.
• To improve boundary-layer parameterization in oceanic and atmospheric models.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Fully resolved simulations capturing individual plant stems and their interaction with air and water over a vegetated bed.
• Temporal Scale: Dynamic simulations capturing the coupled, time-evolving dynamics of air, water, and individual plant stems under gravity-driven flow.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Fully resolved multiphase simulations (capturing coupled dynamics of air, water, and individual plant stems).
• Data sources: Simulation-generated data under quasi-realistic conditions (real air/water viscosity ratio, tenfold reduced density ratio).

Main Results

• Vegetation submerged for four times its height regularizes the water surface.
• The vegetation suppresses strong deformations of the water surface.
• It homogenizes streamwise-propagating wave fronts along the transversal direction.
• Despite these alterations, the equivalent roughness perceived by the overlying air flow remains unchanged.

Contributions

• Clarifies vegetation-surface interactions at a fully resolved scale.
• Provides quantitative insights relevant for nature-based wave mitigation strategies.
• Offers quantitative insights for atmospheric boundary-layer modeling.
• Presents novel fully resolved multiphase simulations under quasi-realistic conditions for this specific problem.

Funding

Not specified in abstract

Citation

@article{Rota2026Effect,
  author = {Rota, Giulio Foggi and Chiarini, Alessandro and Rosti, Marco Edoardo},
  title = {Effect of Submerged Vegetation on Water Surface Geometry and Air–Water Momentum Transfer},
  journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1029/2025gl119671},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl119671}
}