The Dee estuary.
Our changing estuaries
22 June 2009
The Dee Estuary in northwest England has been used as a shipping channel since the start of the industrial revolution.
Today the wings of the largest passenger airliner in the world, the Airbus A380, are transported by barge up the estuary from Broughton in Cheshire to Mostyn docks on their way to the French headquarters of Airbus in Toulouse, France.
But the estuary is full of muddy sediments that move with the tides and are shifted by waves coming into the estuary from the Irish Sea. They change the sandbanks at the entrance to the estuary, moving the shipping channels around in the process and causing other channels to silt up.
Professor Peter Thorne of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in nearby Liverpool uses acoustic techniques to measure exactly where the sediment settles and where the estuary bed is.
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His team's aim is to develop a model that will predict how and when sediment moves around the estuary to stop barges getting grounded on sandbanks in the Dee.
Science writer and broadcaster Sue Nelson meets Peter on a windy beach in West Kirby to find out more.
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