Comment on the article “Morphodynamic classification of sandy beaches in low energetic marine environment” by Gómez-Pujol, L., Orfila, A., Cañellas, B., Alvarez-Ellacuria, A., Méndez, F.J., Medina, R. and Tintoré, J. Marine Geology, 242, pp. 235–246, 2007

Abstract

In a recent study, Gómez-Pujol et al. [Gómez-Pujol, L., Orfila, A., Cañellas, B., Alvarez-Ellacuria, A., Méndez, F.J., Medina, R., Tintoré, J., 2007. Morphodynamic classification of sandy beaches in low energetic marine environment. Mar. Geol. 242, pp. 235–246] used the Wright and Short beach classification scheme fed with hindcasted wave and sediment settling velocity data to classify the morphodynamic states of a group of low-energy Mediterranean beaches (Mallorca, Spain). Here, we use morphodynamic data obtained from an Argus video station and a morphodynamic model to assess the validity of this type of model for predicting beach states under typical Mediterranean wave conditions. The results show that Ω-values alone do not provide a realistic prediction of beach states statistics and that the intensity of the forcing, represented by the wave energy level and the duration of the events, must also be taken into account