Sediment texture analysis along Mandarmani coastal region of West Bengal

The study focuses on understanding the textural characteristics of sediment and their distribution along Mandarmani Beach, West Bengal, India. Sediment samples were collected from selected profiles starting from the Mohona (confluence) region towards thebeach whereby each profile was further divided into backshore and foreshore regions in order to evaluate particle size distribution. Mean grain size, sorting, skewness, andkurtosis are very much essential to identify the dynamicity of the beach environment. Variation of particle size is observed depending on nearness to tidal impact where the location farthest from the tidal creek is deposited by fine sediments in comparison to that near the creek which shows the occurrence of very fine sediments.Mandarmani beach sediments are mostly transported by tractive current by uniform or graded suspension and no rolling as depicted using Passega’s C-M diagram. LinearDiscriminant function analysis suggests deposition of maximum sediment samples inan aeolian, shallow marine agitated environment. The outlier to the observation is found in certain runnel sections.