Hydro-sedimentary processes in a beach-headland system

Abstract

Understanding hydro-sedimentary processes in space-limited environments as embayed beaches is a key question to reconstruct preterit and predict future coastal evolution forced by the mean sea level rise. Moreover, such knowledge is a fundamental management tool in areas where coastal erosion is currently a worrying fact. This work aims thus to assess the sedimentary contribute, provided by the alongshore transport, to feed embayed beaches. At the southernmost rocky coast of Portugal (Algarve), beaches occurring at the cliffs’ foot are separated by headlands connected to shore platforms forming littoral cells as a consequence of the extremely karstified carbonate landscape. The survival of those beaches depends almost exclusively on the alongshore drift.