A novel technique for nearshore morphological monitoring using marine radar: initial deployment and preliminary survey results

Many techniques and tools are available to perform topographic and bathymetric surveys, ranging from vessel-mounted multibeam sonar systems to airborne LiDAR scanners and from portable RTK dGPS to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Each of these methodologies has distinct advantages and disadvantages that make them more or less suitable to the task at hand whether used alone or in combination. Performing surveys in intertidal areas presents a unique challenge given the access restrictions imposed by the tide and the dynamic nature of the substrate being surveyed, which results in surveys becoming rapidly obsolete or, at worst, misleading. A ground-based marine radar using newly developed data processing techniques can continuously monitor intertidal topography, providing information of response to storms and informing management decisions in the face of longer term coastal evolution. This contribution describes this methodology and one of the first deployments of its kind using a ground-based remote sensing platform. Results from the initial deployment of the radar intertidal survey platform at Crosby Beach, northwest England are shown, including an estimate of morphological change as a result of Storm Doris in February 2017