Raphaël Certain

• ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR habilitated to supervise researches in Coastal Dynamics
• Littoral MUltiSCale Analyses group (https://elmusca.wordpress.com/) at University of Perpignan

Coastal protection solutions can be categorised as grey, hybrid or natural. Grey infrastructure includes artificial structures like dykes. Natural habitats like seagrasses are considered natural protection infrastructure. Hybrid solutions combine both natural and grey infrastructure. Evidence suggests that grey solutions can negatively impact the e...

Coastal protection solutions can be categorized as grey, hybrid, or natural. Grey infrastructure includes artificial structures like dykes. Natural habitats like seagrasses are considered as natural protection infrastructure. Hybrid solutions combine both natural and grey infrastructure. Evidence suggest that grey solutions can negatively impact th...

Megacusps generally have wavelengths around hundreds of meters and amplitudes of up to tens of meters. These morphological characteristics are often a reflection of those of the nearshore bars facing them. Just as coupling relationships have been identified between the nearshore bar system, there are also coupling relationships between these bars a...

The morphodynamics of the Leucate double-crescent bar system was studied over twenty years using bathymetric data supplemented by satellite images and video monitoring. Eleven different bar typologies were identified, mostly based on existing beach state classifications (Low-Tide Terrace, Transverse Bar and Rip, Rhythmic Bar and Beach), also includ...

Hard structures like dykes or groins have been recognized for their negative environmental impact and limited durability in the face of climate change (Sutton-Grier et al., 2015). The concept of Shore Soft Engineering (SSE) has allowed ecological considerations to be embedded in the design of coastal protection (Hartig et al., 2011). Among emerging...

Projecting the combined effect of management options and the evolving climate is necessary to inform shared sustainable futures for marine activities and biodiversity. However, engaging multisectoral stakeholders in biodiversity-use scenario analysis remains a challenge. Using a French Mediterranean marine protected area (MPA) as a marine social-ec...

This study focuses on the dynamics of an intermittent estuary in a wave-dominated (mi-crotidal) area, with low fluvial discharges and strong dominant offshore wind regimes. The aims are to understand the effect of these particular environmental factors in the dynamics of such estuaries. The results allow us to propose a synthetic morphodynamic mode...

The Gulf of Lions shelf (southern part of the French Mediterranean coast) displays several occurrences of beachrocks, thus offering an exceptional opportunity to determine the stages of the last marine transgression. These beachrocks crop out especially on the outer shelf and near the modern shoreline. In addition, several other exposures are locat...

The southern part of the Gulf of Lions, formerly described as a double crescentic nearshore bar, may exhibit a third bar closer to the coastline which we defined as Low Beach Bar (LBB). Locally, the inner bar (IB) horn may be less developed and retreated seaward, leaving a larger accommodation space between it and the coastline. This allows the gro...

Projecting the combined effect of management options and the evolving climate is necessary to inform shared sustainable futures for marine activities and biodiversity. However, engaging multi-sectoral stakeholders in biodiversity-use scenarios analysis remains a challenge. Using a marine social-ecological case study, we coupled co-designed visionin...

not published nor reviewed yet, it is here "thanks" SSRN

Topographical complexity of coral reefs is of primary importance for a number of hydrodynamical and ecological processes. The present study is based on a series of high‐resolution seabottom elevation measurements along the Maupiti barrier reef, French Polynesia. Several statistical metrics and spectral analysis are used to characterize the spatial...

Pertes au large- zonages

Billy, J.; Robin, N.; Hein, C.; FitzGerald, D., and Certain, R., 2018. Dominance of inherited geologic framework on the development of coastal barrier system. In: Shim, J.-S.; Chun, I., and Lim, H.S. (eds.), Proceedings from the International Coastal Symposium (ICS) 2018 (Busan, Republic of Korea). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 85,...

Comprehensive onshore-offshore surficial and sub-surface mapping of a composite barrier (combination of prograded, aggraded, and/or transgressive segments) have provided a better understanding of the (i) mechanisms responsible for the formation and development of coastal barrier systems, (ii) relationships and interactions among individual parts of...

This study produces : The 1st RSL reconstruction for the Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon Archipelago Provides: (i) additional details of RSL changes in a region exhibiting great spatial variations in RSL histories (Newfoundland); ii) provides field confirmation that wave-built/aeolian stratigraphic contacts in beach ridges can provide a powerful tool for...

Morphological investigations on the northwest coastal plain of Mauritania (Banc d'Arguin) lead to a revised post-6000 yrs. BP sea-level curve. The region is characterized by extensive sand flats occasionally surmounted by low sand barriers. These barriers pick out a set of paleoshorelines attributed to the six episodes defined by Dia (2013). Morpho...

Slightly oblique nearshore bars are common features on most barred beaches worldwide. However, their great longshore extension requires large spatial scale data sets and thus they have been poorly studied. Our study is based on a large set of data (LiDAR, bathymetric profiles and aerial photographs) to accurately describe the morphology and multi-a...

theme 2 Bilans sedimentaires

Les glaces côtières jouent d’importants rôles dans la morphodynamique littorale et leur absence augmente l’exposition de la plage face aux conditions météo-marines hivernales. Les études sur les effets des processus glaciels sur la morphologie des plages sont essentiellement basées sur des observations qualitatives. L’objectif de cette étude est de...

This paper introduces the main results of a large dataset concerning the impacts of storm events and recovery period on a microtidal double barred beach of the NW Mediterranean Sea (Lido de Sète, Gulf of Lions, South France). The objective is to discuss of the key control parameters among both the forcing conditions and the morphological state of t...

Constructional sedimentary features can provide insight into past changes in relative sea-level (RSL) in regions where traditional bio-stratigraphic markers are absent. The paraglacial beach-ridge plain at Miquelon-Langlade, located 50 km south of Newfoundland, is an example of a well-preserved regressive barrier. Initiation of this plain correlate...

Lakes are major depositional systems for which the related depositional processes have long been considered relatively simple. Breaking this statement, this study presents a detailed analysis of deposits in Lake Saint-Jean, the third largest natural lake in Québec. In addition to postglacial deltaic and coastal depositional systems fringing the lak...

Lake Saint-Jean is the third largest natural lake in Québec (Canada), however very few studies have focused on the basin-scale limnogeology of this lake. An initial very high-resolution seismic survey of Lake Saint-Jean was conducted in 2011, providing more than 300 km of seismic sections throughout the lake. These seismic profiles permitted the id...

Current profiles and waves were recorded from a multi-instrumented transect over a double nearshore bar system in the Gulf of Lions, NW Mediterranean Sea (France) during storm conditions with shoreface significant wave heights of up to 3.2 m. The results constitute a preliminary analysis aimed at constraining the 3D nearshore circulation in a micro...

The stratigraphy of the last deglaciation sequence is investigated in Lake Saint-Jean (Québec Province, Canada) based on 300 km of echo-sounder two dimensional seismic profiles. The sedimentary archive of this basin is documented from the Late Pleistocene Laurentidian ice-front recession to the present-day situation. Ten seismic units have been ide...

The field campaign on the Sète coast deployed during the winter 2009 was used to understand the hydrodynamics on a double barred beach in the surf zone during storm periods. The large set of measurements collected at several position and depth were also useful to improve the 3D circulation model Symphonie that takes into account the atmospherics an...

Nearshore bars have been widely studied in the last decades, describing bar formationprocesses, bar states and evolution, but less attention was paid on the rapid evolution inside stormevents. The present paper aims at giving a new insight of the morphological deformation of barpatterns with particular energetic conditions and typically irregular w...

The main objective of the VULSACO (VULnerability of SAndy COasts to climate change and anthropic pressure) project was to investigate present day and potential future vulnerability of sandy coasts at the 2030 horizon, i.e. on a time scale related to climate variability. The method, based on a multidisciplinary approach bringing together geologists,...

This study assesses three different approaches for evaluating coastal vulnerability using indicators. We began by establishing a procedure for binding three codes to simulate realistic or idealized climates. The procedure was validated in terms of hydrodynamics and beach morpho-dynamics. We then defined and studied the vulnerability of the coast on...

The Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon Archipelago (France) is located in the NW Atlantic Ocean, proximal to the Cabot Straight outlet of the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence, and 50 km south of Newfoundland (Canada). The Miquelon-Langlade Barrier is a 12-km-long, 100-2500-m-wide, north-south oriented isthmus connecting two bedrock islands (Miquelon to the north; Lang...

The Languedoc-Roussillon coastline is a large unit stretching out over 200 km of sandy low coast in a wave dominated environment. The nearshore is characterized by a quasi continuous system of double sandbar that displays a wide range of typology. The interannual sandbar dynamic was investigated using 2D bathymetric profiles and 3D LiDAR imagery. T...

Most of the Mediterranean coastal porous aquifers are intensively exploited. Because of climatic and anthropogenic effects, understanding the physical and geological controls on groundwater distribution and flow dynamics in such aquifers is crucial. This study presents the results of a structural investigation of a system located along the coastlin...

The wave-dominated beach barrier of Villeneuve-Lès-Maguelone extends between Palavas and Frontignan (Gulf of Lions, northernmost Mediterranean Sea), along a slightly natural sandy protected area characterized by typical and well-expressed morphologies. In the nearshore, the sea bottom shows one or two approximately rectilinear sand bars. In 2010-20...

Le lido de Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone (Languedoc-Roussillon) est un archétype de littoral microtidal, dominé par la houle, en érosion, et largement affecté par la submersion marine lors des tempêtes. Les observations réalisées dans le cadre du Système d'Observation Littoral - Trait de Côte (SO LTC) concernent l'hydrodynamique et le transport sédiment...

A large multi-institutional nearshore field experiment was conducted at Truc Vert, on the Atlantic coast of France in early 2008. Truc Vert’08 was designed to measure beach change on a long, sandy stretch of coast without engineering works with emphasis on large winter waves (offshore significant wave height up to 8m), a three-dimensional morpholog...

In a context of climate change, we will present the methodology of the modeling approach to analyze the sensitivity of a Mediterranean beach to forcing conditions changes. This paper discusses the abilities of numerical models to predict the nearshore evolution and to set-up vulnerability indicators of sandy beaches against the climate change predi...

The present study aims to analyze the effects of different submerged bars nourishment strategies using a 2DV process-based morphodynamical model. A two-barred beach profile typical of the French Mediterranean micro-tidal storm-dominated coastline is chosen as a reference profile. Two different kinds of modified beach profiles are considered. (i) On...

This work aims to investigate the processes responsible for the morphodynamics of barred beach during storm events. The contribution compares the response of 2 nearshore bars during storm events at a microtidal double barred beach of the Gulf of Lions, NW Mediterranean Sea (France). Storm-specific experiments were undertaken to assess the morpholog...

Nearshore bars are generally present on sandy coasts and play a significant role in wave breaking and sediment exchange between beach and shoreface. The study area is located on the Languedoc-Roussillon coast in the Gulf of Lions (southern part of the French Mediterranean coast). This microtidal environment is classified as a wave-dominated coast....

The south part nearshore zone of the Gulf of Lions coast (Mediterranean Sea) is characterized by a double crescentic sandbar system. During the winter 2007, a campaign of intensive hydrodynamical measurements (current profiles) was realized. During this campaign, based mainly on ADCPs, the maximal recorded wave height was 1.5 m. Four events were ob...

Le projet VULSACO (2007-2010) est un projet ANR Vulnérabilité Milieu et Climat 2006 portant sur la vulnérabilité des plages sableuses face aux changements climatiques et pressions anthropiques. Dans le cadre de ce projet, un certain nombre de modèles hydrodynamiques et morpho-dynamiques ont été mis en place sur les sites du lido de Sète (34), Truc...

In the littoral zone of the Banc d'Arguin both littoral sedimentary units and man-made deposits (shell-middens) abound. They were formed during the Late Holocene after the final onset of the post-glacial transgression. Here, a geo-archaeological approach is used to study them. The geomorphological and sedimentological characteristics of the coastal...

La Ville de Hyères dans le Var procède chaque année au rechargement de la plage située au Sud du Port de La Capte. Chaque année, sous l'impact des premières houles de tempêtes automnales, le cordon littoral disparaît quasiment. La commune souhaitait donc pérenniser cette plage en réalisant un rechargement accompagné de la mise en place d'atténuateu...

A field campaign of two months took place during winter 2008-2009 in Sete (Languedoc-Roussillon) to improve the understanding of hydrodynamic processes that control the straight bars in microtidal environment. It turns out that there are a large number of configurations of current speeds in the whole of the water column in connection with the meteo...

L'action des tempetes marines entraine souvent des reponses morphologiques rapides et des impacts importants sur les littoraux sableux : recul du trait de cote, submersion et erosion de la plage, franchissements et destruction des systemes dunaires et parfois de l'ensemble du cordon littoral, mais provoque egalement une importante dynamique des bar...

The Maguelone shore extends along the northern coast of the Gulf of Lions margin, West of the Rhône delta and East of some high gradient coastal streams that have been providing most of the clastic sediments to the Gulf of Lions margin since the early Miocene. This 10 km wide area comprises an onshore small coastal watershed (15 km long) in low-lyi...

A study combining very high resolution seismic and sediment core data has been carried out on the Thau lagoon (Mediterranean coast, microtidal setting, SE France) in order to understand more clearly the dynamics and Holocene chronology of its closure through the different stages of its filling. One main seismic unit (U2) has been defined into the i...

central part of the Gulf of Lions shoreline is characterized by many coastal wetlands that resulted from the interaction between a process of shoreline regularization by migrations of littoral barriers and a slow filling of the back-barrier areas by the riverine and marine inputs. Analyses of Late-Holocene deposits with a very high-resolution multi...

The beach of Sète contains two nearshore bars. Field measurements have shown that the outer bar is relatively stable. The behaviour of the inner bar is more complex. In the classic configuration, both bars are straight and parallel to the shoreline. After stormy conditions, the inner bar can be segmented and reoriented so that each segment becomes...

Résumé : Le golfe du lion est caractérisé par la présence d'un vaste ensemble de barres sédimentaires présentes sur l'avant-côte jusqu'à des profondeurs de -8 m CM. Un premier inventaire régional de ces morphologies basé sur l'analyse planimétrique de photos aériennes a montré la diversité des configurations de barres (BARUSSEAU & SAINT-GUILY, 1981...

The observation of the cross-shore sediment displacement in the off-shore direction is one of the objectives of the repeated measurement campaigns that took place at the beach of Sète, Gulf of Lion (NW Mediterranean Sea). The site has been instrumented in 1999, 2000 and more recently in 2009 using wave recording current meters, pressure sensor arra...

The geomorphological, sedimentological and archaeological studies of coastal features in the Iwik-Aouatil area show two categories of coastal sedimentary units: very extensive sand flats and linear relief features covered by a thin veneer of anthropogenic Anadara senilis shell-middens. These units provide an opportunity to discuss the return to ari...

Laboratory experiments on cross-shore beach morphodynamics are presented. A lightweight sediment (density ρs = 1.19 g cm−3) model is used in order to fulfill a Shields number and Rouse number scaling. This choice aims at correctly reproducing bed load transport as well as suspension dynamics. Terraces and barred beach profiles obtained in the exper...

The Maguelone shore extends along the northern coast of the Gulf of Lions, west of the Rhône Delta and east of high-gradient coastal streams that have provided most of the clastic sediments to the Gulf of Lions margin since the early Miocene. This 10 km-wide area is constituted by a small coastal watershed (15 km long) in low-lying carbonate hills,...

The aim of this paper is to present the topographic and bathymetric surveys acquired during the international ECORS mission (March-April 2008) at Truc Vert Beach, SW of France. Topographic surveys have been done with an accuracy of about 2.5cm in the horizontal directions and 3cm for the elevation. Using both a GPS kinematics (by foot or implemente...

The Sète beach (Mediterranean Sea - France) is characterized by two nearshore bars which are generally considered to run parallel to the shore. However in-situ wave/current/bathymetry measurements have shown the possible reorganization of this double bar system during storms associated with oblique waves. Two situations are studied. During the fiel...

Threshold values for sediment resuspension and the displacement direction of the suspended sediment are evaluated at 2 beach locations along the coast of the Gulf of Lion (NW Mediterranean Sea). The westernmost measurement site (Leucate beach) was instrumented with bottom mounted ADCP and ADV in the depth range 3 - 8 m; the easternmost site (S

Sandbar dynamics is a key feature of coastal hydrodynamics and plays an important role in natural shore protection. It is generally recognised that moderate wave forcing can lead to bar formation whereas storms may induce offshore bar migration. Field experiments nevertheless do not usually allow a detailed description of the evolutions due to the...

The south part of the Gulf of Lions coast (Mediterranean Sea) and its double crescentic sandbar system has been observed monthly during a 3-year long period (2005-2008) and yearly from 2000. This paper proposes a conceptual model of the morphodynamic evolution of this microtidal bar system supported by field bathymetric surveys and hydrodynamics me...

Ce rapport présente les résultats de travaux du module 1 « Caractérisation des sites » du projet ANR/VULSACO. L’objectif de ce module est de disposer d’une base de connaissances sur l’état actuel des sites, comme une « photographie » au début du projet. Il s’agit, préalablement aux travaux qui doivent permettre de décrire l’évolution des sites et l...

L'objet de cette communication est la caractérisation hydrodynamique d'un système double de barres festonnées en milieu microtidal. Pour comprendre l'évolution du littoral de Leucate-Plage (Languedoc-Roussillon, France), une campagne de mesures hydrodynamiques in-situ a été réalisée, puis complétée par une étude à l'aide du modèle numérique Quasi-3...