Assessment of sand and stone mining along the coastline of Cape Coast, Ghana

Abstract

Mining of sand and stone from the coasts provides an inexpensive source of materials for the construction industry while providing income to contractors. However, these activities come at a cost to the coastal environment and pose a threat to the tourism industry along the Ghanaian coast. This paper identified the various types of coastal sand and stone mining activities, the level at which they are undertaken and covers the trends in coastal erosion along the coast of Cape Coast, Ghana. ArcGIS (ESRI, Redlands, CA, USA) and Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS; ESRI) tools were used to determine short-term (2005–2012) coastline changes using 2005 and 2012 coastlines data. This study estimates that tipper-truck-based beach sand mining activities alone account for the loss of about 285,376 m3/year of sand from the littoral zone in the Cape Coast area. It was also established that the average erosion rate for the Cape Coast area within the seven year period is 0.85 m/year with two areas recording high erosion rates of 4.35 m/year and 4.25 m/year. The study concludes that sand mining is the main cause of erosion along the coastline of Cape Coast.