Morphostat: A simple beach profile monitoring tool for coastal zone management

Abstract Tidal Lagoon Plc proposes UK-based construction of a hydro-electrical generating facility using the natural ebb and flow of the tide in Swansea Bay, South Wales. This will be the first of its type in the world and to verify its ecological footprint does not adversely affect the normal fluctuations of sediment in the bay, a regime was put in place to monitor potential intertidal morphological change before, during and post construction. An adaptive management strategy was developed to identify coastal changes outside normal evolutionary patterns and a baseline with a monitoring strategy to detect intertidal area change was developed from analysis of historic beach profile data collected between 1998 and 2013. The resulting profile envelope was utilised to define natural variation and evaluated against this was beach level data collected between 2015 and 2016. ‘Morphostat’, a novel application for monitoring beach level changes was developed to provide visual indication of areas of concern revealed from analysis against statistical parameters that is organised into tidal ladder regions. Users are also provided with a quantitative result that enables areas of concern to be identified and trigger levels to be defined. Morphostat visual output provides a traffic light system of Red, Amber and Green that identifies relative levels of concern. Here, exceedance of normal parameters will trigger higher levels of assessment against a predetermined management framework that would include forcing agents such as waves and storms etc. Although initially developed to monitor Swansea Bay, Morphostat can be applied elsewhere in the world for any tidal range, tidal ladder configuration and variable profile length, making it ideal as a first line tool to determine if more detailed assessments are needed. Morphostat is therefore a useful shoreline monitoring tool for underpinning intervention/no intervention policies. It will facilitate assessment of risk, especially from climate change, where beach change can be categorised as within or outside historical trends, thereby improving future high level strategic decision making, allocation of financial resources and coastal zone management, not only in the UK but on a more global scale.