Franziska Staudt

Beach nourishments are a widely used method to mitigate erosion along flood-prone sandy shorelines. In contrast to hard coastal protection structures, nourishments are considered as soft engineering, although little is known about the cumulative, long-term environmental effects of both marine sediment extraction and nourishment activities. Recent endeavours to sustain the marine ecosystem and research results on the environmental impact of sediment extraction and nourishment activities are driving the need for a comprehensive up-to-date review of beach nourishment practice, and to evaluate the physical and ecological sustainability of these activities. While existing reviews of nourishment practice have focused on the general design (motivation, techniques and methods, international overview of sites and volumes) as well as legal and financial aspects, this study reviews and compares not only nourishment practice but also the accompanying assessment and monitoring of environmental impacts in a number of developed countries around the world. The review shows differences in coastal management strategies and legislation as well as large dissimilarities in the licensing process for both marine sediment extraction and nourishment activities. The spatial disturbance of the marine environment that is considered a significant impact varies substantially between countries. Combined with the large uncertainties of the long-term ecological and geomorphological impacts, these results question the assumption that nourishments are a sustainable method for coastal protection.

Beach nourishments are a widely used method to mitigate erosion along sandy shorelines. In contrast to hard coastal protection structures, nourishments are considered as soft engineering, although little is known about the cumulative, long-term environmental effects of both marine sediment extraction and nourishment activities. Recent endeavours to sustain the marine ecosystem and research results on the environmental impact of sediment extraction and nourishment activities are driving the need for a comprehensive up-to-date review of beach nourishment practice, and to evaluate the physical and ecological sustainability of these activities. While existing reviews of nourishment practice have focused on the general design (motivation, techniques and methods, international overview of sites and volumes) as well as legal and financial aspects, this study reviews and compares not only nourishment practice but also the accompanying assessment and monitoring of environmental impacts in a number of developed countries around the world. For the study, we reviewed 205 openly-accessible coastal management strategies, legal texts, guidelines, EIA documents, websites, project reports, press releases and research publications about beach nourishments in several developed countries around the world (Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, UK, USA and Australia). Where information was not openly available, the responsible authorities were contacted directly. The study elaborates on the differences in coastal management strategies and legislation as well as the large dissimilarities in the EIA procedure (where applicable) for both marine sediment extraction and nourishment activities. The spatial disturbance of the marine environment that is considered a significant impact, a factor which determines the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment, varies substantially between the countries covered in this study. Combined with the large uncertainties of the long-term ecological and geomorphological impacts, these results underline the need to reconsider the sustainability of nourishments as “soft” coastal protection measures.

Different studies investigating the stability of mixed sediment have found that the fine fraction can either stabilize or mobilize the bed. This study aims to find where the transition between these two modes occurs for sandy sediment and to identify the underlying (grain‐scale) processes. Flume experiments with bimodal sediment were used to investigate near‐bed processes of a non‐cohesive sediment bed, and in particular how the grain shape and the ratio of different grain sizes influence bed mobility. Medium sand ( D _50,c ≈ 400 μm) was mixed with 40 % fine material of different diameters ( D _50,f = 53; 111; 193 μm) and subjected to increasing flow velocities ( U = 1.3–22.2 cm s ^‐1 ). The bed mobility (i.e. the change of the bed level over time), turbidity and near‐bed hydrodynamics were analysed. Selected results were compared with similar previous experiments with spherical glass beads. The findings indicate that, due to the complex grain shapes of natural sediment, a sand bed is more stable than a bed composed of glass beads. The grain‐size ratio RD = D _c  /D _f between the coarse and fine grain diameters controls whether the mixed bed is stabilized or mobilized by the presence of fines, with the transition between the modes occurring at RD = 4–5.5. Mixed beds with a very low RD < 2 behave like a unimodal bed. The results suggest that RD and grain shape influence bed roughness, near‐bed flow, bed microstructure and the flow into and through the upper bed layers, which subsequently governs bed mobility. The interplay between all these processes can explain the transition between the stabilizing effect (high RD , small pore space) and the mobilizing effect (low RD , large pore space) of a fine fraction in a grain‐size mixture. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.