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Procedia Engineering 116 (2015) 794 – 801

8th International Conference on Asian and Pacific Coasts Coasts

(APAC(APAC
2015) 2015)
Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras, India.

Textural Characterization of Coastal Sediments along Tamil Nadu

coast, East coast of India.
Sathish Sathasivama, R.S.Kankaraa, S. Chenthamil Selvana, Manikandan Muthusamya, Arockiaraj
Samykannua and Rajan Bhoopathia
a
Ministry of Earth Sciences,ICMAM – Project Directorate, NIOT Campus, Chennai- 600 100, India
Email:athi_geo@yahoo.co.in

Abstract

Particle size characterizations of beach sediments along Tamil Nadu coast was carried out in the present study. The main
objective of this work is to identify the textural behaviour of beach sediments and how wave energy correlates with grain size
distribution.To achieve this goal tri-plot analysis was performed. Grain size characteristics such as central tendency, kurtosis
and skewness were estimated using an updated version of the GRADISTAT programme and discussed in this paper. The
highest sediment samples having medium sand with unimodal and bimodal characters at all along the coast. The entire coastal
area was characterized as well sorted, moderately well sorted and moderately sorted sediment environments. Sediments were
identified as fine skewed to coarse skewed with platykurtic, mesokurtic and leptokurtic characters. Grain characteristics varied
spatially and temporally along with beach orientation, foreshore slope withwave action and skewness correlates with shoreline
changes. In some coastal tract having the negative skewness along the study region, but not very significant. The study depicts
that the sedimentary coastal environment were influenced by the relatively medium wave action and some places were observed
high wave action. From this study, it was concluded that the beach erosion, accretion, and stability of beaches are controlled by
strong hydrodynamic and hydraulic process.

© 2015
© 2014The TheAuthors. Published
Authors. by Elsevier
Published Ltd. This
by Elsevier is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
B.V.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of APAC 2015, Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras.
Peer- Review under responsibility of organizing committee , IIT Madras , and International Steering Committee of APAC 2015

Keywords:Grain Size, Weight Percentage, Mean, Skewness, Kurtosis, Gradistat, Tri-plot.

1877-7058 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer- Review under responsibility of organizing committee , IIT Madras , and International Steering Committee of APAC 2015
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2015.08.366
 Sathish Sathasivam et al. / Procedia Engineering 116 (2015) 794 – 801 795

1. Introduction
Grain size is the one of most significant physical property of sediment and commonly used parameterfor
understanding the processes involved in transportation and deposition of sediments (Inman, 1952; Folk and Ward,
1957; Mason and Folk, 1958; Friedman, 1961; Krumbein and Sloss, 1963; Nordstrom, 1977). Some of the
pioneering studies on grain size characteristics are still referred by many researchers. Grain-size parameters are
required and the mean size of medium to very coarse silt has proved to be a useful measure of the speed of the
depositing flow(McCave, 2008) . Geologist employs the sediment particle size data to study the trends of surface
processes related to the dynamic conditions of transportation and deposition. Engineers apply grain size to revise
sample permeability and stability under load. In the great majority of cases, this has been for non-cohesive sands
and gravels. Hydrologists use it when studying the movement of subsurface fluids (McCave and Syvitski,
1991). The objectives of a grain-size analysis are to accurately measure the individual particle sizes to determine
their frequency distribution, and to calculate a statistical report that effectively characterizes the samples. In this
study, an attempt has been made to analyse the beach sediment characterstics along Tamil Nadu coast.
2. Study Area
The study area covers 950 km coastline between Kalpakam to Colachal in Tamil Nadu (TN), covering 11coastal
districts(Figure.1). The coastline is endowed with various geomorphologic features. The coastal zone is under
development pressure and coast is experiencing a range of management problems including shoreline erosion.
About 42% of TN coast is facing erosion. The mean tidal range varies between 0.6 m - 1.5 m. and average wave
height varies from 0.3m-1.8m.

Figure 1: Map of the study site showing the sampling locations.

Tamil Nadu is having a two-monsoon system viz. Southwest summer monsoon (June to September) and the
Northeast monsoon (October to December). Coastal Tamil Nadu receives about 60% of its annual rainfall and
interior Tamil Nadu receives about 40-50% of annual rainfall during the northeast monsoon. The beaches and
beach ridges along the southern division of the east coast of India around Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari and
796 Sathish Sathasivam et al. / Procedia Engineering 116 (2015) 794 – 801

Manavalakurichi are occurred with economically viable placer deposits (Loveson, 1993; Bruckner, 1988). These
deposits are economically feasible and being mined in many places and brings revenue for our country. The
sediment of coastal area have age ranging from Late Pleistocene to Recent(Chauhan, 1989).

3. Materials and Methods

One sixty five sediment samples were collected during the month of August, 2013from the backshore, bermline
and foreshore of Tamil Nadu coastal prefecture. Hereafter backshore, bermline and foreshore are BS, BL, and FS
respectively. Concurrently positioning of samples was conducted by using handled GPS. Samples were carefully
preserved in polythene bags and they brought into the ICMAM-PD sedimentology lab. In the laboratory, dead
shells were separated from sediments and the mixed saline content was removed from the grains by washing with
water. The grain size distribution was carried out by using a sieve shaker and it is consisting of 8 sieves containing
mesh sizes 75µm, 125µm, 180µm, 250µm, 355µm, 500µm, 1000µm and 2000µm.


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Figure 2: Weight % curves of samples

The sediment distribution is presented graphically as weight percentage curves of backshore (Figure.2a), bermline
(Figure.2b) and foreshore (Figure.2c). The statistical parameters such as mean, standard deviation, skewness and
kurtosis were computed by (Folk and ward, 1957) using the GRADISTAT grain size distribution and statistical
package (Blott and Pye, 2001).
 Sathish Sathasivam et al. / Procedia Engineering 116 (2015) 794 – 801 797

3.1. Measurements of Statistical properties

Sediments have many imperative characteristics of which particle size is only one. Particle size refers to the
sizes of all of the particles in sediment. If you compute the mean particle size, this does not tell you about the range
of sizes occurring. If you estimate a range, this does not tell you the shape of the distribution, which might be
normal or strongly skewed to coarse or fine particles. Mean is the arithmetic average size of the sediment and is
expected to be influenced by source of supply, transportation and environment of deposition.

4.Result

The parameters used to describe the particle size distribution fall into four primary groups: those are the mean,
standard deviation (sorting), skewness and kurtosis. These parameters can be easily acquired by mathematical or
graphical methods. The mathematical ‘method of moments’ (Krumbein and Pettijohn, 1938; Friedman and
Johnson, 1982) is the most accurate since it represented the entire sample population. However, consequently the
statistics are greatly affected by outliers in the tails of the distribution, and this form of analysis should not be used
unless the size distribution is known (Mcmanus, 1988). The grain size parameters of the study area and statistical
properties of grain sizes and its interpretations are shown in figures 3-6. Standard deviation of most of the
backshore samples emerge well sorted to moderately sorted (1.29 to 1.79), mean values indicating medium sand to
coarse sand (135.60 to 807.10), skewness values having symmetrical to coarse skewed (-0.25 to +0.36) and
kurtosis values depicts mesokurtic to leptokurtic (0.82 to 1.49). The bermline values conquered that moderately
well sorted to well sorted, mean values dominating from fine sand to medium sand and the skewness is
symmetrical to coarse and kurtosis occurred in all types. In foreshore, standard deviation values implying
moderately well sorted to well sorted (1.2 to 1.98),the meanvalue indicating fine sand to medium sand (130.00to
490.80), the kurtosis depicts platykurtic to leptokurtic (0.84 to 1.69). Friedman (1962) suggested that extreme high
or low values of kurtosis imply that part of the sediment achieved its sorting elsewhere in a high energy
environment. The skewness is varying coarsely skewed to fine skewness (+0.55 to -0.35). The negative skewness
values indicate coarse-skewed material, whereas the positive values represents more material in fine skewed. Fine
sediments were found in the northern part(Kalpakkam to Kodiakarai) of the study area because of the prevailing
high wave energy condition. This is also evidenced by the erosive action of the waves (Rajamanickam et.al.,
(1995) reported high energy condition is also attributable to the presence of submarine canyons in the Pondicherry
and Cuddalore regions. Numerous factors influenced to textural characteristics of coastal sediments. They are
composed of neighbouring lands, climatic condition of that area, tide, littoral transport, length and energy of
sediment transport, redox conditions in the depositional environments (Bhatia and Cook, 1986; Fralick and
Kronberg, 1997; Anithamary et.al., 2011). Moreover, spatial dissimilarity in sediment composition can help to
determine the present environmental conditions. Statistical methods are commonly employed to simplify the
necessary comparisons among samples and quantify the observed differences. Sedimentologists follow to describe
particle distributions by mathematical moments (Krumbein and Pettijohn,1938) and inclusive graphics (Folk,
1974) and statistical methods. In this context, the particle distribution is used for grain size analysis.

Figure 3: Standard deviation of BS, BL, FS

798 Sathish Sathasivam et al. / Procedia Engineering 116 (2015) 794 – 801

Figure 4: Mean of BS, BL, FS

Figure 5: Kurtosis of BS, BL, FS

Figure 6: Skewness of BS, BL, FS

5. Discussion
The weight percentage distribution curves show that the grain size variation was more along foreshore due to
the effect of wave activity compared to bermline. The statistical properties of sediment samples illustrate that
unimodal and bimodal character is dominated in the backshore, bermline and foreshore along the study area. The
backshore sediments predominantly having the medium sand with moderately well sorted to well sorted samples.
In bermline samples, the fine sand to medium sand with moderately well sorted and well sorted was found. In
foreshore, mainly fine sand to medium sand and moderately sorted to moderately well sorted was observed. The
range of kurtosis values more or less same from samples 1-23 (northern part) and sample from 23-55 (southern
part). The 29% (16 nos) of backshore samples are negatively skewed, while 31% (17 nos) bermline samples are
negatively skewed. However, the foreshore samples have relatively lower 24% (13 nos) negatively skew
specimens. The study showed that the negatively (coarse) skewed and positively (fine) skewed samples, indicating
strong deposition and erosion tendency along the study region. The negative skewness was correlated with the long
 Sathish Sathasivam et al. / Procedia Engineering 116 (2015) 794 – 801 799

term shoreline change (1990-2014) result. It was observed that the eroding locations such as Vyalikuppam,
Ganapathychettikulam,Chinnamudhaliyarchavadi,Pombuhar,Tharangapadi, Mimisal, Muthaipuram and
Periyathalai (Kankara and Selvan, 2012) had similar trend of skewness. The results of shoreline changes v/s
negative skewness for foreshore locations are shown in figure 7. In addition, to understand the hydrodynamic
process such as wave with particle size distribution, unconventionally the tri-plot (Figure. 8) method was also
adopted. From the tri-plot analysis, in backshore area, Central part of the Tamil Nadu coast, having fine sand,
Southern part of Tamil Nadu has medium sand and Northern region of coastal zone has coarse sand. Whereas in
bermline, Central part of the Tamil Nadu coast possesses fine sand, Southern part of Tamil Nadu has medium sand
and Northern side consists of coarse sand. In foreshore zone, Northern side comprises fine sand and the Southern
side is dominating the medium sand. The above finding is closely matched with the wave distribution pattern from
south to north of Tamilnadu coast (Sivakokholandu et.al., 2014) where the significant wave height is showing a
decreasing trend from Kanyakumari to Pondicherry

Figure 7: Comparison of measured shoreline change and skewness values where erosion is prominent.
800 Sathish Sathasivam et al. / Procedia Engineering 116 (2015) 794 – 801

Sand Coarse sand


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Figure 8: a)tri-plot for textural analysis of all sediments, b)Different type of sands, c)Foreshore samples,
d)Backshore samples, e)Bermline samples

6. Conclusion

In order to conclude the discussion above which reveals that surface sediment properties of the TN coastal area,
their major inputs and their main transport, depositional processes. Geomorphology and climatic conditions play a
crucial role to control the sediment dynamic nature of the study area. The northern part of TN coast starting from
Kalpakkam to Kodiakarai having fine sand with high energy condition existing, central coast begins with
Kodiakarai and ended with Mandapamincluding Rameshwaram was dominated by medium sand with less energy
condition and similar feature also observed in the southern part from Mandapam to Kanyakumari.

Acknowledgements: Authors would like to thank Dr.Shailesh Nayak, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences,
Government of India and Dr. M.A. Atmanand, PD-ICMAM for their keen interest, encouragement and provided
facilities for this study.
 Sathish Sathasivam et al. / Procedia Engineering 116 (2015) 794 – 801 801

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