Dataset on beach dynamics and beach wrack washing ashore on the Northern coast of the Sambia Peninsula, the Baltic Sea (Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia)
Description
Kaliningrad Oblast, the westernmost region of Russia, suffers from coastal erosion and abrasion associated with storm activity. Also, recently the issue of seaweed dumping (or beach wrack) ashore has been actively discussed in the Baltic Region (Gorbunova, Chubarenko, 2020; Chubarenko et al., 2021). Beach wracks, on the one hand, negatively affect the tourist attractiveness of beaches, and on the other hand, can serve as a resource for their economic use. To monitor the dynamics of the beach and the release of algae on the coast, the webcam was installed at the northern shore of the Sambia Peninsula (Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). The image covers the shore segment of 40 m with the short groin (25-30 m depending on the position of coastline). The webcam was programmed to automatically receive regular photographs of a part of the beach, which is formed to the west and east of the groin. Daily data on the presence of the beach and beach wrack have been collected. In addition, the procedure to calculate the areas occupied by beach wrack was developed and applied. Data collection period 01.11.2019-31.10.2020 The data is collected in a tabular table, it contains several sheets. Sheet 1 (named "Beach-Wrack_data") shows the presence or absence of beach and beach wrack; it has 5 columns: Date (shooting date, format YYYY-MM-DD), BeachW (beach present / absent west of groin), BeachE (beach present / absent east of groin), WrackW (beach wrack present / absent west of groin), WrackE (beach wrack present / absent east of groin). The absence of the beach / beach wrack is designated as "0". The presence of the beach / beach wrack is designated as "1", but if beach wrack is "many" (more the 25% of study area), then it is indicated as "2". Sheet 2 (named "Wrack_areas") shows the area occupied by beach wrack within the boundaries of the study area; it has 5 columns: Date (shooting date, format YYYY-MM-DD), WrackWest separated to 2 columns "area" and "%" (area (m2) and percentage of beach wrack west of groin), WrackEast separated to 2 columns area and % (area (m2) and percentage of beach wrack east of groin). Sheet 3 (named "Legend") shows legend described above.
Files
Steps to reproduce
Photography is made several times a day during daylight hours (at 9, 12, 15 hours, with a long daylight, the shooting range is expanded to 6, 18 and 21 hours). The pictures show the beach and the algae thrown onto it. One best image was selected for each day. The analysis of photographs was carried out in several stages. At the first stage, information on the presence of the beach and discarded beach wrack on both sides of the groin is visually recorded. The data are entered in the corresponding table. Next, those images were selected on which beach wrack were recorded. Based on these images, instrumental calculation of the areas occupied by beach wrack was carried out. Installation of the webcam, automatic transmitting of the images, their storing and providing them to users were carried out within the framework of the project #R090 CONTRA Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme (with limited participation of J.Gorbunova and B. Chubarenko). The processing of the images and analysis were made within the theme No 0128-2021-0012 of the State Assignment of the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of Russian Academy of Sciences.