Eolian Sediment Transport on a Natural Beach

Abstract

An eolian sediment transport model has been used to estimate the average, annual sediment transport from the beach into the dunes and to compute the spatial variability of the transport rates in an alternating erosional and accretionary beach and dune area. The computed accumulation rates in the dune area have been compared with leveling surveys of the dune field, showing good agreement. Various field parameters as the roughness factor, the grainsize distribution, the width of the beach, the beach slope, the moisture content of the beach surface and the angles of the transect and mid-tide line as well as the wind velocity were measured on different morphological units of the beach. Model computations with respect to the sensitivity of the model indicate that the reliability mainly depends on the accuracy of both the roughness factor and the beach width.