Coastal geomorphic impacts of human-induced transformations of the Var River and Delta, French Riviera The high-relief coast of the Baie des Anges, on the French Riviera, is bounded by two gravel barriers linked to the central Var Delta. This deltaic protuberance forms the terminus of a 135 km-long, steep-gradient river. Over the past century, the lower Var valley and the delta have been massively transformed in various ways. These transformations have included reclamation of large sectors of the river bed for agricultural and transport networks, embankments against flooding of the reclaimed land and construction of several low rock dams across the river to enable gravel accumulation and enhancement of the height of the the alluvial aquifer of the Var, which, by the mid-sixties, had dropped considerably as a result of massive human withdrawal. Two important consequences of these changes were a drastic reduction in the supply of gravel to the coast and destabilization of the morphodynamics of the delta front. The drop in gravel supply to the barrier beaches fringing the Baie des Anges resulted in accelerated barrier breakdown. Following a long period of stability during which permanent loss of gravel to the steep nearshore shelf was compensated in the past by fresh supplies from the Var, the implantation of various installations such as seafront roads, rail links, yachting harbours and reclamation fill structures on the barriers had, by the 1950's, already led to the onset of this phase of erosion. The reclamation of much of the lower valley and the entire delta plain resulted in the irreversible transformation of these morphodynamic units into an artificial system bounded seaward by revetments that have replaced the former gravel beaches. Reclamation of the lower valley and of the subaerial delta plain led to enhanced seaward transport of suspended sediments that could no longer be stored within the fluvial system, and to greater fine-grained sedimentation on the steep and unstable delta front slopes. One of the consequences of these transformations, notably the modification of the upper delta front slope, was a catastrophic submarine landslide, in October, 1979. This landslide caused several casualties, destroyed part of the reclamation works on the upper delta front, including a port under construction at the time, and generated a small tidal wave in the Baie des Anges. Whether gradual, as in the case of beach erosion, or associated with threshold exceedance, as in the case of this landslide, prediction of the effects of human destabilization of coastal systems is hampered by a poor grasp of the functional mechanisms and processes underlying such systems, whose stability depends as much on what goes on upland as in the sea.