LAUSR

This paper demonstrates the application of marine radar and a newly developed waterline mapping technique to the continued surveillance and monitoring of inter- and intra-annual intertidal morphological change, thus capturing new detail on coastal system behaviours. Marine radar data from 2006 to 2009 are used to create a sequence of waterline elevation surveys that show clear morphological evolution of two different sites in the Dee estuary, UK. An estimate of volumetric change was made at two locations: West Hoyle sandbank and the NW Wirral beach. Both sites exhibited a similar cyclic pattern of volumetric change, with lowest volumes in autumn and winter, respectively. The average beach elevations above Admiralty Chart Datum clearly reflect the observed change in sediment volume, with reduced elevations in winter and increased elevations in summer, suggesting a trend of high-energy storm waves in autumn and winter that remove sediment and simultaneously moderate the vertical dimension of bedforms in the intertidal area. Data at this temporal and spatial scale are not easily obtainable by other current remote sensing techniques. The use of marine radar as a tool for quantifying coastal change over seasonal and event timescales in complex hydrodynamic settings is illustrated. Specifically, its unique application to monitoring areas with dynamic morphology or that is vulnerable to erosion and/or degradation by storm events is exemplified.