Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.1
The ocean-facing beaches of Australia's Gold Coast in SE Queensland, renourished
over the last four decades with sediment pumped northward past the mouth of the Tweed River
in northern New South Wales, as well as local placement. Beach renourishment helps to protect
coastal property from erosion and flooding, as well as providing valuable recreation space.
© Nick Lewis
The concept of beach renourishment expects that the placed sediment, along
with the existing beach material, will adapt its shape to the changing wave and
tidal conditions and dissipating wave energy. The topic of beach renourishment
has a substantial and rapidly growing geomorphological, engineering and envi-
ronmental literature. Major works on the technical aspects of beach renourish-
ment include the Shore Protection Manual produced by the US Army Corps of
Engineers (
1984
), the Delft Hydraulics Laboratory (
1987
) manual on beach ren-
ourishment, the German Empfehlungen für Küstenschutzwerke (EAK
1993
),
the American topic on Beach Nourishment and Protection (NRC
1995
), the
Coastal Engineering Manual produced by the United States Army Corps of
Engineers (USACE
2002
), the textbook Beach Nourishment: Theory and Practice
(Dean
2002
) and the British Construction Industry Research and Information
Association (CIRIA) Beach Management Manual (CIRIA
1996
,
2010
).
Most renourishment projects have taken place on coasts where the natural
beach has been depleted by erosion. Beach renourishment has been used at seaside
resorts where erosion had become a problem, in order to restore the beach for rec-
reational use. However, some beaches have been inserted primarily as a means of
protecting the coastline by absorbing wave energy and so preventing further cliff
