Textural studies of beach sediments from Sadashivagad and Karwar, Central west coast of India

Abstract

Analysis of textural parameters such as mean grain size, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis was done for 48 surface sediment samples of two close but separate beaches, namely Sadashivagad and Karwar, in the Central West Coast of India. Frequency distribution curves for both the beach sediments differ in their modal class showing unimodal to weakly bimodal trend for the Sadashivagad and strongly bimodal to unimodal trend for the Karwar beach sediments. The plots of mean grain size vs skewness seems to be most effective in differentiating the environment of deposition. The plots of mean size vs standard deviation show a progressive increase in sorting with decrease in mean grain-size for both the beach sediments of the Sadashivagad and the Karwar. Symmetrical skewed sediment distribution on the Sadashivagad beach indicate slow rate of deposition whereas negatively to positively skewed sediment distribution on the Karwar beach indicate strong winnowing and deposition