Utilisation d’un altimètre (ALTUS) destiné à la quantification des dépôt/érosion en domaine littoral pour l’étude des corrélations avec les caractéristiques de vagues et les interfaces de dépôt

Quantitative evaluation of erosion/deposition events of surficial sediments is crucial to understand the processes and establish sedimentary budgets in coastal areas The ALTUS system was designed for more than a decade, to meet this objective The possibilities offered by this altimeter (short-term or several months measurements) are particularly fitted for validation of sedimentary transport numerical models The recent integration of a large capacity memory card has allowed to optimize the system Indeed it is well established that wave activity is one of the key parameters for the erosion and hence govern sediment transport in intertidal/shallow water areas The ALTUS system in addition to bottom level variation recordings allows access to wave characteristics (wave height significant period bottom shear stress) Correlations can be established between a recorded erosion and dynamics (waves, human impact) In this paper it is particularly reported laboratory tests carried out in order to assess the ability of ALTUS to detect relatively "rough" changes of the physical characteristics of surficial sediment deposits