Grain size variability as an indicator of sediment transport alongshore the Curonian Spit (south-eastern Baltic Sea)

Abstract

Sediment samples have been collected along the sea coast of the Curonian Spit in summer season of 2011, 2014 and 2015-years. According to grain size analysis the shoreline and the berm consist of well and very well-sorted sand, medium-sized on the southern (Russian) part of the spit, medium and fine on the northern (Lithuanian) part. ‘McLaren’ method was applied to determine the long-shore sediment transport directions. Mismatch of results with those obtained by methods based on simulation of resulted wave action did not prove the hypothesis that ‘McLaren’ method was able to reveal long-term resulted sediment transport. The hypothesis that ‘McLaren’ method indicates the directions of alongshore sediment transport during the stormy conditions preceding the sampling period was not proved also. It was concluded that application of ‘McLaren’ method in respect of the Curonian Spit shore, which is a transit one without permanent sources or sinks of sediments, is not efficient. ‘McLaren’ method was applied to describe the cross-shore sediment movement. It was found that deposits from the trough (located between the bar and shoreline) are transported to the shoreline that is in a line with the known fact about cross-shore transport of bottom material during the calm weather.

Longshore Transport Variability of Beach Face Grain Size: Implications for Dune Evolution

“…The McLaren model is supposed to be generally applicable to different types of subaqueous sediment transport, such as fluvial transport, delta-lacustrine transport, and longshore transport (McLaren and Bowles, 1985). However, when applied to longshore sediment transport on sandy beaches, the results are mixed-in some cases satisfactory (Mohd-Lokman et al, 1998), whereas in other cases inadequate (Kovaleva et al, 2016;Masselink 1992).…”

The influence of natural and anthropogenic factors on grain size distribution along the southeastern Baltic spits

“…These meth ods have been widely used to de ter mine sed i ment trans port in differ ent sed i men tary en vi ron ments and are in agree ment with direct mea sure ments of pro cesses and nu mer i cal mod el ling results (Mal let et al, 2000;Rios et al, 2002;van Lancker et al, 2004;Hequette et al, 2008;Maillet et al, 2011;Poizot et al, 2013). Sed i ment trend anal y sis meth ods (Mc Laren and Bowles, 1985;Gao and Col lins, 1992) were used to de ter mine pat terns of the long shore and cross-shore sed i ment trans port in the Polish, Lith u a nian and Rus sian nearshore zone of the Bal tic Sea by Baraniecki and Racinowski (1996), KairytÅ and Stevens (2015) and Kovaleva et al (2016). How ever, when ap ply ing the above-men tioned meth ods for the de ter mi na tion of sed i ment trans port vec tors, re search ers of ten come across un ex pected cir cum stances, e.g.…”

“…How ever, when ap ply ing the above-men tioned meth ods for the de ter mi na tion of sed i ment trans port vec tors, re search ers of ten come across un ex pected cir cum stances, e.g. anom a lies in li thol ogy or depositional en viron ment and anthropogenic ac tiv ity, which might be in ter preted as di ver gence or con ver gence zones of sed i ment fluxes (Viška and Soomere, 2013;Ostrowski et al, 2014;Kovaleva et al, 2016;Krek et al, 2016). The dis tri bu tion of beach sand grain size along the Bal tic Sea coast on three spits (the Hel, Vistula and the Curonian) has been in ves ti gated in part (Žilinskas et al, 2001;Jarmalavièius and Žilinskas, 2006;Kobelyanskaya et al, 2009Kobelyanskaya et al, , 2011Zhamoida et al, 2009;Ruciñska-Zjadacz and Rudowski, 2015;Kovaleva et al, 2016;Rudowski et al, 2016;Pupienis et al, 2017).…”

“…anom a lies in li thol ogy or depositional en viron ment and anthropogenic ac tiv ity, which might be in ter preted as di ver gence or con ver gence zones of sed i ment fluxes (Viška and Soomere, 2013;Ostrowski et al, 2014;Kovaleva et al, 2016;Krek et al, 2016). The dis tri bu tion of beach sand grain size along the Bal tic Sea coast on three spits (the Hel, Vistula and the Curonian) has been in ves ti gated in part (Žilinskas et al, 2001;Jarmalavièius and Žilinskas, 2006;Kobelyanskaya et al, 2009Kobelyanskaya et al, , 2011Zhamoida et al, 2009;Ruciñska-Zjadacz and Rudowski, 2015;Kovaleva et al, 2016;Rudowski et al, 2016;Pupienis et al, 2017). It was found that sand dif fer en ti a tion on the beach is af fected by hydro meteoro logi cal fac tors (Kobelyan skaya et al, 2011;Jarmalavièius et al, 2012a;Furmañczyk, 2013;Jarmalavièius et al, 2015;Ruciñska-Zjadacz and Rudowski, 2015;Kovaleva et al, 2016), anthropogenic ac tiv ity (Furmañczyk, 1995;Blazhchishin, 1998;Jarmalavièius and Žilinskas, 2006;Žilinskas et al, 2010;Pupienis et al, 2017) and the geo log i cal frame work (Furmañczyk and Musielak, 2015;Žilinskas et al, 2016b;Jarmalavièius et al, 2017a).…”

“…The dis tri bu tion of beach sand grain size along the Bal tic Sea coast on three spits (the Hel, Vistula and the Curonian) has been in ves ti gated in part (Žilinskas et al, 2001;Jarmalavièius and Žilinskas, 2006;Kobelyanskaya et al, 2009Kobelyanskaya et al, , 2011Zhamoida et al, 2009;Ruciñska-Zjadacz and Rudowski, 2015;Kovaleva et al, 2016;Rudowski et al, 2016;Pupienis et al, 2017). It was found that sand dif fer en ti a tion on the beach is af fected by hydro meteoro logi cal fac tors (Kobelyan skaya et al, 2011;Jarmalavièius et al, 2012a;Furmañczyk, 2013;Jarmalavièius et al, 2015;Ruciñska-Zjadacz and Rudowski, 2015;Kovaleva et al, 2016), anthropogenic ac tiv ity (Furmañczyk, 1995;Blazhchishin, 1998;Jarmalavièius and Žilinskas, 2006;Žilinskas et al, 2010;Pupienis et al, 2017) and the geo log i cal frame work (Furmañczyk and Musielak, 2015;Žilinskas et al, 2016b;Jarmalavièius et al, 2017a). In or der to avoid am big u ous in ter pre ta tions of long shore sed i ment transport, it is rec om mended to use sev eral dif fer ent sed i ment transport anal y sis meth ods and take into con sid er ation sta tis ti cal valid ity (Le Roux and Rojas, 2007) when as sess ing trends.…”