Li Y.-Q.; You Z.-J.; Shi H.-Y., and Ren, B., 2020. Construction of in-situ coastal experimental station to continue assessing shoreline protection performance of geotextile sandbags. In: Malvárez, G. and Navas, F. (eds.), Global Coastal Issues of 2020. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 95, pp. 267–271. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

Storm-induced coastal erosion is one of main natural hazards on the coast of China and appears over one-third of the Chinese coastline. How to protect the valuable coastline from extensive erosion is of enormous economic and social values. In this study, a 74 m-long erosive coastline with high dune of about 8 m on the coast of Chudao in China has been ecologically protected with durable geotextile sandbags and then served as an in-situ permanent experimental station to continuously assess the shoreline protection performance of geotextile sandbags. The in-situ station consists of three different test segments (S1, S2, S3) and each of them was designed differently to optimize the stability and construction cost of geotextile sandbags. The sand-filled geotextile bags are designed to have the same dimensions of 1.3 m long, 0.8 m wide, and 0.2 m high and last for about 20∼30 years. Before and after the in-situ station has been built, the essential field data are collected: (1) monthly surveying of 20 permanent beach profiles to evaluate the beach profile changes; (2) monthly collection of numerous sand samples to analyze sediment grain size changes; and (3) monthly monitoring of maximum wave runup levels and sandbags stability. In analyzing the collected filed data, it is found that high wave runup is main driver for the shoreline erosion at this study site and the test segment (S2) together with geogrids is most effective and economic of the three test segments. The test segment (S2) will be redesigned to further assess the effects of sandbag size, revetment height and geogrid meshing on the performance of geotextile sandbags at this in-situ station.