Analysis of Salinity Alterations due to Estuarine Waterway Deepening by Artificial Neural Networks

摘要

Deepening of estuarine waterways effects primarily changes of tidal water levels and secondarily that of tidal volumes and salt intrusion. These effects are subject of Environmental Impact Assessments which are often checked by afterwards monitoring for preservation of evidence. After the deepening of the waterway in the Outer Weser estuary among others such measurements were carried out for salinity. Since the data indicated alterations of salt intrusion into the Weser estuary a reliable quantification of the changes by conventional procedures like e. g. nonlinear regression analysis failed. However test with Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) provided reliable results for the respective data sets gained before and after the waterway deepening. Whereas the application of the ANN which was trained with data before the deepening mismatched with the data gained after deepening. These differences provide a reliable measure for the increased salt intrusion into the Weser estuary due to the deepening of the Waterway.