HOW TO ANALYSE BEACH PROFILE MEASUREMENTS?

Abstract

A manager of a sandy coastal area is by virtue of his or her profession interested in the behaviour of that coastal area. Is the coast eroding, accreting or, by chance, stable? And, if the coast is not stable: what are the erosion or accreting rates? It is almost trivial to mention that the basic information can be acquired with a measuring program. In collecting data almost always a more or less 'natural' evolution can be noticed. One starts often collecting data which can be simply acquired. E. g. aerial photographs or surveys of the position of the waterline only. A next step in a ' natural' evolution consists often of more extended measurements. E. g. entire cross-sections are measured on a regular basis. These extended measurements are often necessary to really understand what happens with the coast. That doesn' t mean, however, that the former, simple, measurements become useless. A special treatment is necessary to ' couple' the results of the simple measurements to the results of the extended measurements. If that is possible indeed, mostly a data set holding over a longer period can be acquired. If, after a couple of years, a series of measurements is available, the question arises: how to analyse the data in order to get a clear insight in the behaviour of the coast? In this contribution mainly two topics are discussed: - analysis of entire beach profiles - coupling procedures of 'simple' measurements to ' extended' measurements.