Natural evolutionary trend in two pocket beaches of Calabria (south Italy).

Pocket beaches are small stretches of coastline confined between two headlands and with very poor or none sediment inter-changes with adjacent coastal sectors. Sediments in these beaches vary from gravel to sands and generally derive from local rivers, cliff erosion and material carried on the coast at the end of the last transgression. Even if the pocket beaches are very common around the world, literature is not quite exhaustive about their hydrodynamic, morpho-sedimentary processes and natural evolutionary tendencies. The study focuses on two pocket beaches of the Calabria coast, which differentiate for exposure to the sea, coastal setting, sediment characteristics, and drainage basin of the rivers that feed them [1] [2] [3]. All these aspects were analyzed in the present study, which aims to identify the evolutionary coastal trends and related environmental drivers, particularly those playing an important role in the past, today and probably in the future. Data used concern: (a) climate time-series recorded by dozens of meteorological stations distributed in the drainage basins; (b) orthophotos and topographic maps dated back to different periods, by which rates of shoreline changes and related sediment imbalances were estimated; (c) multi-temporal DGPS data recorded during two-years in order to ascertain the short-term beach variations; (d) bathymetric measures supported by scuba diving observations; (e) beach-shoreface sediment grainsize data.