Klaipėda port jetties impact on the Baltic Sea shoreline dynamics, Lithuania

Abstract

ABSTRACT Pupienis, D., Jonuskaitė, S., Jarmalavicius, D., and Žilinskas, G., 2013. Klaipėda port jetties impact on the Baltic Sea shoreline dynamics, Lithuania. Port of Klaipėda is Lithuanian Baltic Sea harbour, which construction began in 1835. From 1835 to 2002, Klaipėda port gate (jetties and Klaipėda port entrance channel) saw several stages of reconstruction. Within the last reconstruction works of Klaipėda port gate in 2002, the southern and northern port jetties were extended reaching 1300 m and 1400 m respectively, and the entrance channel was dredged to the depth of 14.5 m. The objective of this paper is to determine the tendencies of shoreline variations in the northern part of Klaipėda harbour, at the Melnragė, on the basis of the analysis of cartographic material from different periods (1835–2010), as well as monitoring data on coastal dynamics (1996–2012) and by applying empirical mathematical functions: the parabolic bay equation. The analysis of cartographic material showed that in the nort...