Abstract
-
Sediment budgets are fundamental approaches in coastal studies for allowing estimates
of volumes of sediments entering and exiting a selected area of the coast, resulting in
net erosion or accretion of that compartment under consideration. This assessment is
crucial for understanding current processes and predicting future effects of sedimentimpact
activities, promoting the sustainability of coastal environments over the next
centuries. In this paper we present a series of preliminary spatial, sedimentological and
geophysical analyses undertaken in order to understand the sources, sinks, transport
and pathways for the sediment budget of the Shoalhaven coast, a compartment whose
sediment provision is supplied primarily by the Shoalhaven River (draining a catchment
of 7,151 km2) and that stretches ~32 km from the rocky headland of Black Head at
Gerroa (north) to the Beecroft Peninsula near Currarong (south). Analysis included the
use of sub-bottom profiler, ground penetrating radar, RTK-GPS, aerial photographs,
satellite images, LiDAR, echosounding, computer modelling, as well as grain size
parameters from ~200 sediment (and mineralogy for selected) samples from the estuary,
beach and shoreface.