Abstract
Grain-size distribution of beach sediments is one of the important proxies indicating aspects of sediment transport patterns and environmental characteristics. The seasonal sediment sample has been collected for 3 years at 26 stations along the tropical beaches of the eastern Arabian Sea. Sediment characteristics, sources, physical conditions, and transport patterns are derived. The sediments are medium-to-coarse in size and moderately-to-poorly sorted during the south-west monsoon attributable to high wave energy and strong winnowing action. During pre- and post-monsoon season, the sediments are medium to fine and are very well-to-moderately sorted which signifies low-to-moderate energy condition. The linear discriminate function indicates that the sediments are mainly deposited in the beach or the shallow marine environment under the influence of turbidity current. Beach or tractive current energy conditions and rolling, bottom suspension and rolling including graded suspension and no rolling mechanics of transportation are inferred from CM diagrams. The sediment transport patterns reveal that the direction in most of the stations is toward the south. The present study concludes that sediment textural parameters, mechanism of transport and deposition, and their trend are dependent on the prevailing monsoonal energies in the tropical beaches of the eastern Arabian Sea.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to Space Applications Centre (SAC), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Ahmedabad, India for the award of Research Project under the Meteorology and Oceanography Programme-III. The authors thank the Department of Marine Geology, Mangalore University for extending facilities. We also extend sincere thanks to Mr. Ratheesh Ramakrishnan and Dr. A. S. Rajawat, Geo-Sciences Division, SAC, ISRO for their constructive scientific suggestions. We thank Maria Virgínia Alves Martins (Editor-in-Chief) for expeditious handling, anonymous reviewers for their effort to review the manuscript and suggest improvements.
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Shetty, A., K. S, J. Proxies for sediment transport patterns and environmental characteristics: a case study of Karnataka coast, India. J. Sediment. Environ. 6, 107–120 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43217-020-00038-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43217-020-00038-z