I am gathering papers about intertidal sediment (sandy beaches) characterisation (facies mapping) based on spectroradiometry.
I am planning to go out in the field, collect sand samples from the swash zone to the backdune depositional environments, evaluate sediment charachteristics and relate them to their spectras.
The spectral profile of bare sand is almost featureless within the VIS range, however, by using a 300-1000 nm spectroradiometer, I hope I will get enough heterogeneity in spectral response to map different "sands" within a sandy beach.
The literature is full of papers about using spectra to get sediment granulometry, mineralogy, organic matter, humidity, and other variables.
However, I am looking into papers about sand classification with broader classes that intrinsically inherit the complex spectral response from their biophysical heterogeneity .
Any idea?
Nick
Dear Mr. Pucino:
This is one of the issues trying to solve an equation with several unknowns. The two fundamental problems are as follows.
1. Beach is on one side a very broad term as far the processes is concerned ranging from pure deposition to erosion with a wide range of features resulting from them as a consequence of the interaction between continental and marine processes and it is per definition of the processes a term used in describing the coastal morphology constrained to a narrow zone called backshore. In terms of sediments it covers the backshore, foreshore and the most landward part of the shoreface.
2. The coastal sediments commonly consist of the light minerals quartz, feldspar, white-mica-group phyllosilicates and carbonate minerals enriched in Ca and Mg, covering a wide range of morphologies and a wide particle interval. The mineral assemblage may be added up with heavy minerals totaling to an amount so as to name the sediment a placer deposit. The third component is the organic matter (OM), certainly the most complex type of all to come to grips with. Shape and composition of mineral particles and OM have a strong say on the spectral response on the ground and the more so when using air- or satellite-borne devices for detection.
All that has to be done under natural conditions of different humidity on the ground and in the atmosphere.
With this in mind, I suggest to be more focused in the selection of your testsite and also with regard to the terminology used; otherwise I am afraid you will easily get drowned and you can add only another paper to the plethora of papers, all of which try to achieve too much in the shortest period of time.
I wish you much success
H.G.Dill
Thanks Harald G. Dill for your advice.
The focus area goes from the swash zone to the backshore.
I guess one key issue will be to obtain meaningful sand classes based on their spectra classification, as a result of interaction of petro-mineralogical proprieties (thus, intrinsically, optical as well) and also in terms of OM.
I do not want to use spectra to extract single sediment parameters (granulometry, texture, OM content, Humidity), like most of the papers.
Rather, I want to find broader classes, something like:
- wind-blown sand from foredune
- sand from onshore transport
- subangular sand from cliff erosion
- ...
Thx again for the inputs.
My Best Regards
Nick
Dear Mr. Pucino,
in this case I recommend to direct your efforts towards morphological studies (see CAMSIZER data of mine) and measurements of the paleocurrents.
Regards
H.G.Dill
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