Longshore Sediment Transport Patterns In Mozambique: A Tool For Coastal Planning

The coast of Mozambique is the result of a complex geologic setting coupled with oceanographic and hydrological processes. Its geomorphological characterization linked to the meteo-oceanographic processes has not been yet investigated in detail, despite their relevance in land use planning and coastal risk prevention. This is vital to identify present and future conflicts being a fundamental tool for its management. This work pursues a first analysis of the combined description of geomorphological features in Mozambique jointly with a simplified hydrodynamic characterization, leading to a first assessment of the longshore sediment transport. The work aims to identify the present littoral cells following the methodology proposed by Bray, Carter and Hooke (1995) and the comprehensive approach followed by the DOORS EU project. The analysis is supported by an extensive literature review, a detailed description of the wave climate taken from the ERA5 data set, along with data obtained using low-cost and do-it-yourself equipment, and the resulting longshore sediment transport in different scenarios, present and future. The identified units cover a wide range of coastal archetypes from exposed sandy beaches to barrier systems or coral reefs. From an energetic point of view, Mozambique's coast showed significant changes depending on the region. Likewise, sediment transport also differed in direction and magnitude between regions. This work is an important base for the management and risk assessment of the Mozambican coast, which remains highly unexplored. This study is funded by the PITACORA project (TED2021-129776B-C21) and the FI AGAUR grant (2022 FI_B 00897).