Determination of Longshore Sediment Transport and Modelling of Shoreline Change

1.1 Longshore sediment transport Littoral transport is the movement of sedimentary material in the littoral zone, that is, the zone close to the shoreline. Littoral transport is classified as cross-shore transport or as alongshore transport. Littoral transport results from the interaction of winds, waves, currents, tides, sediments and other phenomena in the littoral zone. Transport can be described by the product of instantaneous concentration and the instantaneous velocity. Generally the sediment transport through a plane of unit width and height equal to the water depth is denoted by,