Estudo de transporte dos sedimentos e a sua distribuição ao longo da praia de Macuti, Cidade da Beira, Província de Sofala

Abstract

Particle size is the basis for accurate description of sediments and its distribution may be characteristic of sediments deposited in certain environments. Therefore, the present work aimed to study sediment transport and its distribution along Macuti beach, Beira city. For this, a field trip was conducted in which 10 samples were collected in the transverse and longitudinal profile of the study area, which had treatments in the soil laboratory of Costal Marine Science High School of Eduardo Mondlane University (ESCMC-UEM), which consisted of carbonate removal by a 10% HCl solution. The organic matter was removed by 10% hydrogen peroxide. Afterwards, the particle size analysis was performed in the Technology Science, Humanity High Institute of University Polytechnic (ISHCT-UP) engineering laboratory, where appropriate sieves were selected using the sieving technique. The weights retained in each sieve were used to build charts with Microsoft Office Excel software. To identify the morphodynamic state of the beach, the study region was surveyed in order to know the profile of the beach, using UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) for the coordinate survey, later on the data were plotted under Golder Surf Software 11. The results showed that in Macuti beach, in both longitudinal as well as cross sections, sediments tended to decrease in size, and on average sediments that characterise coarse sand, medium sand, and fine sand are moderately selected, with curves of very negative asymmetry (excess of larger grains) and mesocurtic (normal curves). Based on the morphodynamic model adopted, the studied beach was classified as environments prevailing the reflective beach stage.