Current countermeasure of beach erosion control and its application in Taiwan

The shoreline of Taiwan is approximately 1100 km long, composed of sandy beach, rocky coast, and reef coast. Almost half of the shoreline has been protected by seawalls, which play an important role for coastal protection and prevent people and infrastructure from coastal hazard. Besides, offshore breakwaters and groynes are also built in the serious erosion coastal shores. All these hard engineering structures made our coastal land safety to some extent at last fifty years. However, until now, the hard engineering structures applied for shore protection do not always work well on all the coasts around Taiwan. Some coastal areas still get eroded seriously with structures being damaged. Furthermore in the recent years, people gradually value the shore protection from different viewpoints, like environment, recreation, and ecology. The objectives of the shore protection are diversified by these new demands. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the strategy on how to conjoint soft solutions into the current hard engineering structures for beach erosion control throughout Taiwan coast. Meanwhile, this paper will also introduce environmentally, user-oriented, and technically sound creditable protection works to meet the new trends of shore protection. For application purpose, two local sites in the southwestern Taiwan coast are selected for field experimental study to integrate the proposed soft solution with hard shore protection system at present. Furthermore for coastal management purpose, this paper also collects and analyzes hydro-morphodynamic data around Taiwan in order to identify beach erosion mechanism. Lastly, the results are presented by database and geographic information system. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.