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Beach and Nearshore Instrumentation

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Encyclopedia of Coastal Science

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Science Series ((EESS))

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Instrumentation in studies of the coast generally, and of the beach and nearshore zone in particular is designed to measure attributes of form and changes in the form (bed) over time, including bedforms; fluid processes related to waves, water level and currents in the water and wind on the beach; and sediment concentration and mass transport rate in the water and on the beach. These measurements may be made at a variety of temporal scales ranging from fractions of a second to months and years and spatial scales ranging from a few square millimeters to hundreds of square kilometers. Some attributes are measured individually, but much of the focus today, and over the past three decades, has been on measurements of morphodynamics, in which the objective is to measure fluid and sediment transport processes and the resulting change in morphology at a temporal scale of minutes to days and occasionally months. Much activity is focused on sandy and to a lesser extent muddy coasts and much of...

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Cross-references

  1. Airborne Laser Terrain Mapping

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  2. Erosion Processes

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  3. Geographic Information Systems

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  4. Global Positioning Systems

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  5. Monitoring, Coastal Geomorphology

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  6. Muddy Coasts

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  7. Photogrammetry

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  8. Sandy Coasts

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Authors
  1. Robin Davidson-Arnott
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA

    Maurice L. Schwartz

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© 2005 Springer

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Davidson-Arnott, R. (2005). Beach and Nearshore Instrumentation. In: Schwartz, M.L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Coastal Science. Encyclopedia of Earth Science Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3880-1_30

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