Application of Parabolic Bay Shaped Beach Model Concept to Natural Beaches in Northern Cyprus

The inevitable necessity of shoreline protection in coastal regions have driven many researchers towards finding several various analytic approaches, concerning shoreline planform preservation. The equilibrium planform concept is being widely used and modified over more than two decades after the introduction of the Parabolic bay shaped beach model by Hsu and Evans in 1989. Cyprus Island has relatively high economical dependency on its sandy shorelines, which are mostly natural headland bays. The fact that most of the rivers located in the island are dried out, duo to careless dam construction over the years; seems to have compromised the main sediment inflow resource for the coastal regions. Hence the existing compulsion for more forecasting and planning, concerning shoreline protection is very clear. Application of the aforementioned approach to 7 different coastal locations in the northern part of Cyprus island have been carried out, using MEPBAY and also 2 different modifications of the model had plotted alongside the main MEPBAY result to contrast the effect they have on the results. Concerning the shoreline equilibrium the remaining coastlines are more or less stable but because of the unreliable diffraction points associated with these headland bays, in some cases the coastline is not in a desirable stable situation. Accordingly various suggestions for headland extension are presented in the different regions. Also the mathematical algorithm developed in the process of the study, showed several limitations and miss-presentations concerning the available equations, which in one case led to finding a new mathematical expression for one of the constants of the parabolic equation. Keywords: Parabolic bay shaped beach model, headland bay beaches, shoreline landform stability analysis