Artificial nourishment

Tina Mertens is working on this article. For information on beach nourishment, see Experiences with beach nourishments in Portugal and shore nourishment.

Introduction

Artficial nourishments

The basis of this article is especially written for the Coastal Wiki by the main author referred to at the bottom of this page. This article gives insight in the application and the implications of artificial nourishments. For an additional view on methods, functional characteristics and applicability of artificial nourishments, you are referred to the article shore nourishment.

Introduction

Artificial nourishments are examples of projects where the coastal system is fed with sediments (sand) from a source (borrow area) at a certain distance from the project area. Other examples of projects where the coastal system is fed, are large scale land reclamation projects and the construction of an artificial island in open sea. In these cases often huge volumes of sand are required; up to several hundreds of millions m3 per project.

In this article on artificial nourishments applications with moderate volumes per project are discussed (order of magnitude up to 10 million m3 per project).

But why should one apply artificial beach nourishments? Artificial nourishments can be applied in various cases; e.g.:

1. to broaden the beach (recreation purposes);
2. to create entirely new beaches (recreation purposes);
3. to enhance the safety of the mainland or to enhance the safety of properties built rather close to the edge of the dunes;
4. to compensate losses because of structural erosion.

The first three cases are to be considered as applications to improve an existing undesirable situation. With a mainly single action a ‘better’ situation is achieved. In principle a single action indeed, although often some relatively small maintenance nourishments are necessary in order to keep the situation as required according to the design conditions.

In the fourth case artificial nourishments are applied as a tool in coastal protection projects. Because of structural erosion sediments are more or less continuously lost out of a stretch of coast; (frequent) artificial nourishments are required to compensate on average the occurring losses.

So depending on the actual aim of the nourishment project, the nourishment can be carried out as a mainly single action or the nourishment has to be repeated on a regular basis.

To carry out an artificial nourishment project, various methods can be applied; see e.g. xxxx)

Single artificial nourishments

1 Beach broadening

Figure 1 shows in top view a stretch of coast. The width of the existing beaches is felt to be too small for e.g. a prosperous recreational development. Over a part of the stretch one likes to broaden the beach (e.g. in front of a coastal village). It is assumed that the coast is more or less stable seen over a number of years.

Figure 2 shows schematically cross-section A-A as was indicated in Figure 1. With an artificial nourishment as also is indicated in Figure 2 the aim, broadening the beach, is simply achieved. (It is first assumed that the 'borrow' sediment is similar to the 'native' material.) However, assuming that the shape of the cross-shore profile in the pre-nourishment period was more or less in equilibrium, it is quite clear that the shape right after finishing the project, is not in equilibrium anymore. Natural coastal morphology processes (in this case: cross-shore sediment transports) will flatten out the 'disturbance' from the equilibrium profile; the so-called equilibration process. Some maintenance will be required in order to keep the desired beach width. The inevitable process of re-establishing the shape of the equilibrium profile, starts with ‘using’ the sediments from the beach nourishment meant to widen the beach. This is often interpreted as unexpected erosion by a non-specialised observer. This phenomenon, however, is a well-known coastal feature; one cannot ‘unpunished’ create a disturbance in the coastal zone. At the end of the day, not only the upper part of the cross-shore profile is widened, but also the deeper part of the cross-shore profile is shifted in seaward direction (say over the entire so-called active part of the cross-shore profile). See Figure 3 for a sketch. Due to the increased width of the beach, sooner or later also the dunes will grow in seaward direction.

If the borrow material is quite different from the native sediment, the processes as indicated above, will be slightly different. If the borrow material is the same as the native sediment, then essentially the same shape of the cross-shore profile will be achieved as the pre-nourishment equilibrium shape after the equilibration process. However, if the borrow sand is much finer than the native sand the post-nourishment equilibrium shape of the cross-shore profile will be more gentle than before the nourishment. And if the borrow sand is coarser than the native sand, the equilibrium profile will be steeper.

With the aim of the project in mind (beach widening) an obvious method is to nourish the beach directly. However, by nourishing the shallow foreshore, ultimately also the aim can be achieved. By onshore directed cross-shore sediment transport processes, the beach will be sooner or later fed at a natural manner. Nourishing the shallow foreshore has some advantages over nourishing the beach directly. Sometimes it might be cheaper (e.g. so-called rain bowing with small dredges) and/or less hindrance occurs for the beach which is used for recreation purposes in the summer season. A direct nourishment of the beach often hampers recreation on the beach, because the sand has to be brought up to the beach by pipelines and noisy shovels are needed to distribute the sand properly over the beach.

Since it was assumed that the nourishment project to broaden the beach occupies only a restricted piece of coast in alongshore direction (say: 2 km), some losses of sediment out of the actual project area in longshore direction have to be expected; see Figure 4. Also in this case one cannot ‘unpunished’ alter only a part of the coast. Losses do occur. If the required widening of the beach must be maintained over the entire project area, maintenance is necessary.

See Also

• Soft shoreline protection solutions
• Experiences with beach nourishments in Portugal
• Light revetments built-in into artificial dunes
• Beach drainage

References

1. The Netherlands
2. Spain
3. Sweden
4. United Kingdom

The main author of this article is Tina Mertens Please note that others may also have edited the contents of this article. Citation: Tina Mertens (2008): Artificial nourishment. Available from http://www.coastalwiki.org/wiki/Artificial_nourishment [accessed on 22-11-2024] For other articles by this author see Category:Articles by Tina Mertens For an overview of contributions by this author see Special:Contributions/Tinamertens