• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.19-30
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• 2020

To understand the impact of typhoons on Gamji gravel beach Taejongdae in Busan, we carried out beach profiling using a VRS-GPS system and a Drone photogrammetry for the typhoons 'Kong-rey' invaded in October 2018 and 'Danas' in July 2019. In addition, grain sizes are analyzed to investigate the overall distribution pattern of gravels on the beach, and the beach topography is surveyed periodically to confirm the recovery rate of the beach. Grain-size analysis reveals that mean gravel sizes, in general, become finer from -6.2Φ to -5.4Φ towards the east in the seashore line direction. Variation in mean sizes is obviously observed in the cross-shore direction. Gravels in the swash zone are relatively fine about -4.5Φ in size and equant in shape, whereas the coarse and oblate gravels ranged from -5Φ to -6Φ are found in the berm. Gamji gravel beach particularly has two lines of berms: a lower berm situated facing beach and an upper berm about 10 m landward. After the typhoon Kong-rey passed by, about 1.4 m of severe erosion in upper berm occurred, and the berm eventually disappeared. On the backshore of the upper berm about 50 cm of erosion took place so that the elevation became lower. However, tangible erosion was not observed in the lower berm. When typhoon Danas hit, rated as mild storm, both upper and lower berm were eroded out. However, about 50 cm of deposition occurred only in the backshore. Only three days later, the new lower berm was formed, meaning that sedimentation rate must be high. This result indicates that Gamji gravel beach is recovered very fast from erosion caused by the typhoons when it is under the fair-weather condition even though beach morphology changes dramatically in a short period of time. Gravel beach is estimated to be or evaluated very resilient to typhoon erosion.