The effect of dune morphology longshore variation in the beach-dune system resilience

Abstract

The present study consists on the analysis of the effect of the longshore variation of the frontal dune morphology in the beach-dune system morphodynamics during erosion events. Despite the predominance of the cross-shore component of the coastal processes under storm conditions, it is important to understand how the longshore gradient of such processes can affect the cross-shore component. The lack of field or laboratory data is an obstacle to the understanding of the underlying physics. Thus, this investigation is developed with a 2DH process-based numerical model. The morphology of the study zone is simplified in order to limit the complexity of the underlying physics and to be able to identify the driving processes more clearly. Initially, the bathymetry is uniform and only the frontal dune height varies alongshore. However, in time, as the dunes erode, only the topography above the foreshore becomes non-uniform, despite the volume of sediment extracted from the dune face which is transported seaward being higher for the highest dunes. Such sediment is stirred by the longshore current to the adjacent areas in front of the lowest dunes protecting these against erosion.