Erosion and heavy mineral depletion of a placer mining beach along the south-west coast of India: Part I-Nearshore sediment transport regime

The Chavara coast of southwest India is well known for its rich beach placer deposits which are being commercially exploited by the industries. Replenishment of these resources, which consist of heavy minerals of varying densities, by the hydrodynamic processes is essential for maintaining the stability of the coast as well as sustenance of mining. Rich concentrations of heavy minerals were reported consistently in the beach sediments of this coast in the past, but a systematic reduction in the concentration of the heavies has been reported during the past one-and-a-half decades. This paper, the first in a series of three, emanates from a programme of study launched to understand the mechanisms that manifest the reported changes in the morphology and mineralogy along this coast. In this study the longshore and cross-shore sediment transport rates along this coast have been estimated adopting numerical model studies. The validated LITDRIFT and LITPROF modules of the LITPACK modelling system have been used for computing the longshore and cross-shore sediment fluxes in the surf zone and innershelf region. The net annual longshore sediment transport is northerly in the surf zone where as it is southerly in the innershelf. Detailed analysis of the computed results shows domination of onshore transport over offshore transport. The beach volume change estimated from the measured beach profile on the other hand shows a reduction in the annual replenishment. The domination of the onshore flux as seen in the computations is actually not reflected in the field observations, and this can be attributed to the influence of excessive sand mining by the industries.