2.1 Test sites
To quantify and assess the capability of this novel technique to
estimate beach-face slopes, eight diverse locations across three
continents are considered. The selected sites exhibit a large range of
beach-face slope, grain size and tidal range. Among the eight sites, two
are macrotidal beaches (Slapton Sands, UK and Cable Beach, Australia),
three are mesotidal beaches (Tairua, New Zealand, Torrey Pines, USA and
Ensenada, Mexico), and three are microtidal beaches (Narrabeen and
Moruya-Pedro, Australia and Duck, USA). The sites were selected based on
availability of repeat in situ topographic surveys to calculate
the temporal-average beach-face slope, defined for each cross-shore
transect from mean sea level (MSL) to mean high water springs (MHWS).
TableĀ 1 summarises the key characteristics at each site (average beach
slope, mean spring tidal range, mean deep-water significant wave height
and sediment grain size) and the geographical locations are presented in
Figure S1 (Supporting Information). The broad range of temporal-average
beach-face slopes range from 0.025 at Cable Beach to 0.14 at Slapton
Sands.