Coastal protection solutions in a highly energetic wave climate and beach erosion environment: the Furadouro case (Portugal)

Abstract

Numerical modeling studies of the coastline evolution for the Furadouro coastal stretch (Portugal mainland west coast) were carried out. Four intervention scenar-ios are compared, involving the maintenance of the existing coastal structures and/or the construction of a detached breakwater, with or without a large-scale, 4 million m3, artificial beach nourishment. This paper contains a brief characteriza-tion of the last-decade morphological evolution of the Furadouro coastline, and the methods and results of modeling its coastline evolution. A classical one-line type shoreline evolution model was calibrated and applied for each scenario eval-uation. The efficacy of the detached breakwater in enhancing the beach width in front of Furadouro is dependent on its location and can be equivalent to the case of nourishment only. The compound intervention (breakwater plus nourishment) significantly increases the town maritime frontage protection but also induces greater erosion problems downdrift.