Two-dimensional trend surface analyses were performed on areally distributed tracer-concentration data for three different fluorescent sand tracers recovered from four depth intervals of the foreshore. The tracers had been affected by the swash, breakers, and longshore currents of one tidal cycle. Analysis of the statistical significance of trend surfaces for each depth interval showed that only the upper 2.5 cm. of the sand column evidenced definite trend components. Differential sorting of tracers of different shapes and mean grain sizes was probably negligible, as deduced from the similarity in direction of orthogonals to the trend surface contours for the various tracer data. The advantage of the trend surface method of describing sand movement patterns on beaches lies in its ability to represent, in an objective manner, the average movement of sand grains by means of a single representative equation. Furthermore, for time scales of the order of minutes to several hours, the motion of sand is seldom p...