Abstract:
Beach nourishment has become important means of a nature based coastal protection in the world, which has been widely used. With the increasing number of coastal beach nourishment projects in windy coasts around the world, it is found that beach nourishment has a series of effects on the coastal aeolian sand process. The beach nourishment project has formed a new beach landform, by which the beach fetch length has expanded, the aeolian material source increased, the beach elevation improved and sediments on the beach surface changed. The changes in the beach landform where the composition of the sediments changed the aeolian sand movement process. Compared with the natural beach aeolian sand process, the aeolian sand effect of beach nourishment has its own unique process and characteristics, and it has become one of the hotspots of coastal sandstorm research. This paper mainly describes the research progress of the changes in aeolian sand environment, the changes in aeolian sand activity under the influence of beach nourishment and the impacts of beach nourishment on dunes. The paper also summarizes the deficiencies and gaps between the researches on beach nourishment in China and the world. Combined with the future development of beach nourishment in China, some future research directions on the aeolian sand effect of beach nourishment in China are put forward.