A fluorescent sand-tracer experiment was performed at Comporta Beach (Portugal) with the aim of acquiring longshore sediment transport data on a reflective beach, the optimization of field and laboratory tracer procedures and the improvement of the conceptual model used to support tracer data interpretation.
The field experiment was performed on a mesotidal reflective beach face in low energetic conditions (significant wave height between 0.4 and 0.5 m). Two different colour tracers (orange and blue) were injected at low tide and sampled in the two subsequent low tides using a high resolution 3D grid extending 450 m alongshore and 30 m cross-shore. Marked sand was detected using an automatic digital image processing system developed in the scope of the present experiment.
Results for the two colour tracers show a remarkable coherence, with high recovery rates attesting data validity. Sand tracer displayed a high advection velocity, but with distinct vertical distribution patterns in the two tides: in the first tide there was a clear decrease in tracer advection velocity with depth while in the second tide, the tracer exhibited an almost uniform vertical velocity distribution. This differing behaviour suggests that, in the first tide, the tracer had not reached equilibrium within the transport system, pointing to a considerable time lag between injection and complete mixing. This issue has important implications for the interpretation of tracer data, indicating that short term tracer experiments tend to overestimate transport rates. In this work, therefore, longshore estimates were based on tracer results obtained during the second tide.
The estimated total longshore transport rate at Comporta Beach was 2 × 10− 3 m3/s, more than four times larger than predicted using standard empirical longshore formulas. This discrepancy, which results from the unusually large active moving layer observed during the experiment, confirms the idea that most common longshore transport equations under-estimate total sediment transport in plunging/surging waves. 相似文献
Marine geophysical data from around the submarine flanks of volcanic islands can potentially help to resolve whether large-scale
instability of an edifice has been geologically recently active. We use geophysical data to investigate part of the coast
of Pico Island of the Azores where, above sea-level, a major slump of Topo volcano has been interpreted previously from arcuate
escarpments and a rugged irregular topography seaward of them. Multibeam echo-sounder data collected offshore of this feature
show remarkably little evidence for slump fault movements in the island's submarine slope. Mid-slope benches, like those associated
with the Hilina Slump of Kilauea, are absent. The high-resolution data extends onto the island's shelf, allowing us to evaluate
evidence for continuing activity there. In particular, as the shelf's rock platform will have been last modified by surf erosion
during the postglacial period of sea-level transgression, it provides a reference surface of intermediate age (7–19 ka) that
can potentially reveal whether any movements occurred in pre-historic times. Where the arcuate escarpments are continued offshore,
the modern seabed shows no bathymetric evidence for active faults where the shelf rock platform crops out in the multibeam
data. Elsewhere, mobile shelf sediments could be disguising evidence for active faulting so we examined boomer profiles able
to image the rock platform beneath them. The data reveal a platform that is steep (6.6°) compared with the dips of platforms
that we have studied previously around the coast of adjacent Faial Island and steeper than the platform outside the proposed
slump. This suggests that it was created by coastal erosion over a shorter period and hence is consistent with a younger age
of the coastline. As with the multibeam data, where escarpments are continued offshore onto the shelf, the rock surface imaged
with these boomer data also shows no clear evidence of major slump-related fault displacements. This study therefore illustrates
how high-resolution boomer seismic and multibeam data could usefully contribute to hazard assessment of volcanic islands,
by helping to evaluate areas with no historical movements. Explanations to reconcile the onshore and offshore data here are
also put forward. 相似文献
