Sediment volumetric change in the swash zone

It is nice to look at beach profile development, but easy to lose the oversight because there are so many profiles to look at! A convenient way to get insight into the profile development so far and place it in the context of all the tests conducted so far is to plot the time series of the change in upper beach sediment volume. The plot below shows exactly this and illustrates: (i) progressive loss of upper beach volume during tests A1, A2 and A3; (ii) some recovery during A5 when the beach was subjected to several sequences of monochromatic wave action; (iii) stabilisation during run A4 (erosive waves, but low lagoon level); and (iv) very rapid upper beach accretion during the first accretionary test A6. Interesting question will be how the trend of beach accretion continues under high (A7) and low (A8) lagoon level conditions.