DEFRA have targeted EA with recreating saltmarsh by flooding farmland. Here is reason #2 why this policy is fatally flawed.
There is mud in the sea around East Anglia, that’s why the sea is murky unlike in Cornwall or Mediterranean. This mud is deposited on mud flats, causing them to rise.
Saltmarsh is essentially flat and above the level of sea, except for spring high tides.
If saltmarsh is submerged for any significant length of time it dies.
Mud is also desposited on saltmarsh at spring high tides, which causes the level of saltmarsh to rise.
Mud is sometimes called sediment and the rate mud (or sediment) is deposited is called the sedimentation rate.
If the sedimentation rate is less than the rate of sea level rise then eventually saltmarsh will become submerged and die.
EA and NE and DEFRA (and Met Office!) believe the rate of sea level rise is increasing, and this is why they must create more saltmarsh.
But the rate of sealevel rise they predict becomes greater than the sedimentation rate, which means existing saltmarsh and newly created saltmarsh will die.
Hence the policy is fatally flawed.
ps money spent on trying to create saltmarsh could be spent on maintaining sea defences
