Enlightenment to China's coastal protection from the coast beach nourishment at Huizhan Zhongxin of Xiamen Island

Hard-revetment is a conventional means of coastal protection.For decades,the soft revetment,which mainly consists of beach nourishment,has become an important way to protect the coast in developed countries in Europe and America,while it is still in its infancy in China.This paper focuses on the beach nourishment practice on the coast at Huizhan Zhongxin(Conference and Exhibition Center,CEC) Xiamen Island.Through constructing its geomorphology successions,numerical simulation of the beach nourishment plan and regular observation of the profile changes after the project,the necessity and feasibility of this project and stability of the nourished beach is discussed.Meanwhile,combined with the development of revetments in developed countries,the revetment reformation in China is discussed.The results show that the beach nourishment project in CEC coast have changed the revetment form from hard to soft.And the monitoring data of the five profiles for half a year after beach nourishment indicates that the average retained sand volume per unit width after 6 months is 381.4m3/m,which takes up 86.7% of 440m3/m at initial period,indicating that the new beach is basically stable.Beach nourishment can restore damaged beaches,improve the urban environment,increase the taste of the city,promote the development of urban coastal tourism and ultimately stimulate socioeconomic development.Beach nourishment covers social,economic,environmental,ecological,and many other effects.China's coastal protection forms now is on the way from hard structure to soft nourishment and beach nourishment will be the better solution to coastal protection.