title: The effectiveness of beach mega-nourishment, assessed over three management epochs.
abstract: Resilient coastal protection requires adaptive management strategies that build with nature to maintain long-term sustainability. With increasing pressures on shorelines from urbanisation, industrial growth, sea-level rise and changing storm climates soft approaches to coastal management are implemented to support natural habitats and maintain healthy coastal ecosystems. The impact of a beach mega-nourishment along a frontage of interactive natural and engineered systems that incorporate soft and hard defences is explored. A coastal evolution model is applied to simulate the impact of different hypothetical mega-nourishment interventions to assess their impacts' over 3 shoreline management planning epochs: present-day (0-20 years), medium-term (20-50 years) and long-term (50-100 years). The impacts of the smaller interventions when appropriately positioned are found to be as effective as larger schemes, thus making them more cost-effective for present-day management. Over time the benefit from larger interventions becomes more noticeable, with multi-location schemes requiring a smaller initial nourishment to achieve at least the same benefit as that of a single-location scheme. While the longer-term impact of larger schemes reduces erosion across a frontage the short-term impact down drift of the scheme can lead to an increase in erosion as the natural sediment drift becomes interrupted. This research presents a transferable modelling tool to assess the impact of nourishment schemes for a variety of sedimentary shorelines and highlights both the positive and negative impact of beach mega-nourishment.
authors.affiliation: National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool, L3 5DA, UK. Electronic address: jebro@noc.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Jennifer M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool, L3 5DA, UK; Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZT, UK.
authors.forename: Jack J C
authors.initials: JJC
authors.lastname: Phelps
authors.affiliation: British Geological Survey, Nottingham, NG12 5GG, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Barkwith
authors.affiliation: British Geological Survey, Nottingham, NG12 5GG, UK; School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK.
authors.forename: Martin D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Hurst
authors.affiliation: British Geological Survey, Nottingham, NG12 5GG, UK.
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Ellis
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZT, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Plater
mesh_terms: D001493:Bathing Beaches; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D017753:Ecosystem; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: Beach mega-nourishment; Coastal evolution model; Coastal resilience; Dungeness; Shoreline evolution; Shoreline management planning