Abstract
In this study we aimed to gain insights into dune formation and evolution from select coastal tracts of Northern Tuscany by inspecting their internal sedimentary architecture with Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) analysis. Erosion, equilibrium and accretion characterize the selected coastal tracts, and this analysis remarks on some GPR features consistently associated with specific coastal evolution states. A standard sequence of data processing made it possible to trace several radar surfaces and reflectors in the GPR profile, eventually interpreted in terms of depositional processes and erosive events. The stable or currently accreting coastal sectors show radar features compatible with a general beach progradation process, punctuated by berm formation in the general context of a positive sedimentary budget. Additionally, the radar facies distribution locally supports a mechanism of dune nucleation on an abandoned berm. Conversely, the GPR profile of the coastal sector today affected by erosion shows how a negative sedimentary budget inhibited coastal progradation and favored destructive events. These events interacted also with the active dunes, as demonstrated by the overlapping of wave run-up and aeolian radar facies. GPR prospections were effective at delineating the recent/ongoing coastal sedimentary budget by identifying radar features linked to construction/destruction phenomena in the backshore, and to dune nucleation/evolution.
Highlights
Our radar survey showed that the analyzed sites experienced beach progradation Our that was not continuous but punctuated by the formation of berms
Other radar features point out a process of dune development starting from the formation of a berm during stormy weather weather that, that, due due to to return return to to fair fair weather weather along along with with the the abundance abundance of stormy of sediment sediment supply, became inactive because it was no longer reached by the wave run-up
Supply, became inactive because it was no longer reached by the wave run-up
Summary
The stratigraphic architecture may represent an archive potentially yielding data about wind intensity/direction, sea-storms’ intensity/frequency, sediment availability, incoming wave energy and direction, nearshore geomorphology, shoreline configuration and sea-level changes [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13] Obtaining this information has proven extremely difficult because field exposures are frequently limited and preserved only for a short time. The non-cohesive nature of aeolian sediments limits artificial trenches to only a few meters below the ground’s surface, and the low percentage of sediment recovery makes cores scarcely effective in most cases Even successfully undertaken, these two approaches offer only a punctual or very restricted vision of the subsurface’s stratigraphic architecture, and the potential lateral extension of sedimentary bedding architecture is largely based on interpolations between spotted data and/or subjective spatial interpretation
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