Morphological changes at Desaru Beach, Johor

Abstract

East coast of Peninsular Malaysia experiencing serious coastal erosion due to the influence of the Northeast monsoon. This study mainly investigates the beach profiles changes of Desaru Beach. The scope of the study focused on accretion and erosion process of beach profile using short-term and long-term data set. The short term field data collection was carried out in three different periods through August, September and October 2016. While, the long term analysis used current data collection and previous collected data since 2013. Beach profiles were measured using Real Time Kinematic Global Positioning System (RTK-GPS) technique. Samples of sediment were also collected and analysed to determine the sediment grain size distribution. Sediment samples analysis showed that the beach consist of uniform sediment. The median size of sediment at the beach is 0.35mm. The shortterm results indicated that the beach profiles eroded on August 2016 and slowly accreted towards October 2016. For long-term analysis, the comparisons between mid-year annual changes showed equal accretion and erosion process from 2013 to 2015. However, there were significant erosion occurred between 2015 and 2016. Another long-term analysis was seasonal monsoon changes from December 2013 to December 2015. There were gradual erosion occur throughout the period with severe erosion occurred on December 2015. From long-term analysis, Desaru Beach was severely eroded in December 2015 and the beach profile showed that the shoreline is retreat.