Shoreline Change around a River Delta on the Cox’s Bazar Coast of Bangladesh

Abstract

A recent erosional problem around a river delta on the Cox’s Bazar coast was analyzed in this study. The coastline extends from south to north. Rapid erosion has affected some portions of a 24-km road along the coast, and local authorities have attempted to protect the road via revetment. However, the structure was soon buried with sediment because of a growing sand spit along the river delta, and a new area was eroded. Shoreline positions for a 44-year (1972–2016) period were digitized using Landsat images. From the time stack images, we observed a sand spit growing in a northward direction from 2000 to 2015, and the adjacent erosion area extended in the same direction. We employed a numerical model (MIKE21FM SM) for the computation of wave-driven currents and sediment transport along the coast, and attempted to reproduce recent erosional processes. The numerical result shows that net littoral drift is dominant in the northward direction along the coast, which is the same direction of the spit growth observed in the satellite images. A higher amplitude spit induces higher sediment transport compared to a low amplitude spit because of the difference in local incident wave angles resulting in greater positive gradient of the longshore sediment flux distribution, causing erosion in the downcoast.