Identification of Wave Regimes That Influence the Black Sea Sand Shores: Sediment Accumulation and Erosion

Based on the previously revealed typical scenarios of nonlinear wave transformations in the coastal zone of the Black Sea within the Bagnold energetic approach to assessing the transport of sediments and on the widely used Bailard formula, a methodology for dividing wave regimes in the coastal zone into erosive and accumulative ones is developed. The criterion for erosion is the presence of a extended section of bottom deepening along the coastal zone, which was formed during the storm due to a spatially monotonous growth of the second nonlinear harmonic of waves approaching the shore, along the width of the coastal zone. The estimated lengths of the eroded area obtained on the basis of the proposed method are quite consistent with experimental data.