Beach-face slope dataset for Australia

Abstract

Sandy beaches are unique environments composed of unconsolidated sediments that are constantly reshaped by the action of waves, tides, currents, and winds. The most seaward region of the dry beach, referred to as the beach face, is the primary interface between land and ocean and is of fundamental importance to coastal processes, including the dissipation and reflection of wave energy at the coast and the exchange of sediment between the land and sea. The slope of the beach face is a critical parameter in coastal geomorphology and coastal engineering, as it is needed to calculate the total elevation and excursion of wave run-up at the shoreline. However, datasets of the beach-face slopes along most of the world's coastlines remain unavailable. This study presents a new dataset of beach-face slopes for the Australian coastline derived from a novel remote sensing technique. The dataset covers 13 200 km of sandy coast and provides an estimate of the beach-face slope every 100 m alongshore accompanied by an easy-to-apply measure of the confidence of each slope estimate. The dataset offers a unique view of large-scale spatial variability in the beach-face slope and addresses the growing need for this information to predict coastal hazards around Australia. The beach-face slope dataset and relevant metadata are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5606216 (Vos et al., 2021).