Author(s)

D. Rihouey & Ph. Maron

Abstract

Empirical eigenfunction analysis of long-term bathymetric data along the beaches of Anglet D. Rihouey & Ph. Maron LaSAGeC, Universite' de Pau et des Pays de I 'Adour, France Abstract For decades, important beach retreat has been observed in the coastal area of Anglet. Thus, the understanding and prediction of coastal behaviour, over a time span of decades, has become a priority for the conurbational council of Bayonne Anglet Biarritz. The first step towards increasing the knowledge of the behaviour of the beaches of Anglet, is to study historical data and Empirical Orthogonal function (EOF) analysis has become an established technique for investigating temporal beach level fluctuation. So, EOF techniques were applied to a set of 25 maps for dates between 1979 and 2001 in order to identify trends or cyclic behaviour in the beach morphology. Thus, no clear long-term trends were observed but some interesting observations, like the underscoring of two significant systems of beach behaviour, were mad

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