Beach nourishment

Beach nourishment is the placement of imported sand or gravel on an eroding beach to widen it and raise its protective profile, a soft coastal-protection method that keeps the beach as the wave-energy absorber rather than building a hard wall. The fill is usually dredged from an offshore borrow area by a trailing suction hopper dredger and rainbowed or pumped ashore, then graded to a design profile that the sea reshapes into an equilibrium slope. Fill grain size should match or slightly exceed the native sand, since finer fill is winnowed out fast. It needs periodic renourishment because it does not stop the underlying transport deficit, only offsets it.