Journal of Coastal Research
2014
Coastal monitoring, video system, river mouth, sand spit, beach cusps migration
The understanding of morphological processes controlling the evolution of sand spit reformation after a tsunami impact is a challenging and interesting topic, especially in highly energetic and micro tidal environments. A field campaign performed during December 2012 at the Mataquito River mouth in Chile, allowed us to simultaneously monitor topo-bathymetry evolution, wave climate, tidal range, swash zone dynamics and upper beach face evolution over a portion of its sand spit. A video system was set up for a continuous and long-term monitoring of the evolution of the river mouth and sand spit. Primarily, in this work we focus on the application of a video-derived shoreline detection method to assess shoreline evolution and beach cusps migration at hourly scales. We test the method performance on short-term episodic migration of beach cusps recorded during the campaign. Beach face variations at a daily scale were observed, which can be attributed to the migration of beach cusps in the alongshore direction, and linked to wave forcing and alongshore sediment transport.
- Rodrigo Cienfuegos, racienfu@ing.puc.cl, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Centro Nacional de Investigación para la Gestión Integrada de Desastres Naturales (CIGIDEN), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
- Mauricio Villagran, mvillagranv@uc.cl / mvillagran@ucsc.cl, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Departamento de Ingeniería Civil, Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, UCSC.
- Juan C. Aguilera, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
- Patricio Catalán, patricio.catalan@usm.cl, Departamento de obras civiles, Universidad Técnica Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile. Centro Nacional de Investigación para la Gestión Integrada de Desastres Naturales (CIGIDEN), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
- Bruno Castelle, b.castelle@epoc.u-bordeaux1.fr, EPOC- OASU, University the Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
- Rafael Almar, rafael.almar@ird.fr, Institut de Recherche pour le développement (IRD)/ LEGOS, Toulouse, France