Beach Infiltration and Morphodynamics Revealed Through Multi‐Depth Sediment Temperatures
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Seawater flooding on sandy beaches can mobilise sediments, elevate water tables, and salinize fresh groundwater, driving complex fluid, solute, and heat fluxes that are challenging to monitor. While past studies have assessed vertical saltwater intrusion, they seldom consider the thermal dynamics of beach sediments or how temperature signals can yield insights into other coastal dynamics. This study examines the influence of seawater flooding and erosion/accretion on beach sediment temperature dynamics to identify distinct thermal signatures for future quantitative applications of heat as a tracer of coastal zone dynamics. Over 1 year of multi‐depth beach sediment temperature, groundwater level, and electrical conductivity data collected on Sable Island, Canada, reveal the influence of meteorologic, oceanic, hydrogeologic, and morphologic drivers on beach thermal regimes. Meteorological forcing expectedly exerts a dominant diurnal and seasonal control on shallow sediment temperatures in clear conditions. During seawater flooding, shallow sediment temperatures rapidly change to equilibrate with local sea surface temperatures as seawater infiltration drives ‘thermal plug flow’ due to advection‐dominated heat transport. Winter floods warm beach sediments while spring floods cool beach sediments, revealing seasonally distinct thermal disturbances due to flooding. Beach morphodynamics influence the propagation of sediment temperature dynamics because erosion (accretion) increases (decreases) the amplitude ratios between sediment temperatures at the surface and a fixed subsurface elevation. Thermal consonance timing (TCT) and an analytical solution to the one‐dimensional heat diffusion equation yield time series of morphologic evolution that match manual measurements. Complex temperature signals from moisture, salinity, and thermal dynamics limit the applicability of established heat tracing approaches for quantifying vertical porewater fluxes in beaches; however, distinct thermal signatures help qualitatively trace seawater flooding and erosion/accretion. Results lay the foundation for future quantitative algorithms that use heat to infer concurrent beach morphodynamics and groundwater fluxes and their influence on biogeochemical processes and coastal ecosystem functioning.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".