Ocean and Coastal Management 192 (2020) 105211 Available online 3 May 2020 0964-5691/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Beach nourishment practice in mainland Portugal (1950–2017): Overview and retrospective Celso Aleixo Pinto a, * , Tanya Mendes Silveira a, b , Sebasti~ ao Braz Teixeira a a Ag^ encia Portuguesa do Ambiente, I.P., Rua da Murgueira, 9, Zambujal, Alfragide, 2610-124, Amadora, Portugal b Instituto Dom Luiz, Faculdade de Ci^ encias, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Beach fll Sediment management Coastal erosion Beach recreational use ABSTRACT A compilation of all beach nourishment projects conducted along mainland Portugal was made, totalizing 134 interventions up until 2017. The objectives, type of deposition, borrow area, responsible entities and geographic distribution of each intervention were identifed and are herein briefy presented and discussed. Beach nour- ishments were mostly carried out to improve the stability of the coastline, as a mitigation measure for coastal erosion, and to increase beach width for recreational use, as a tool for adding value to the coast. Operations concentrated in: 1) urban areas where erosion can pose risks to people and assets, 2) close to river mouth/inlets where port structures are established, and 3) touristic areas with high recreational value. Port Administrations contributed most (in number and volume) for the nourishment operations (62% of all operations), favouring the placement of the dredged sediments on the nearshore, and, more recently, providing the sediment of opportunity for subaerial beach flls and/or dune reinforcement carried out in cooperation with the State Environment/ Coastal Authorities. The increase in the number of beach nourishments was accompanied by a decrease in the number of "hard" coastal structures, concurring to the optimization of an integrated coastal sediment manage- ment policy, in a clear paradigm shift that started in the 90s in regard to the coastal protection/defence strategy. There is a growing awareness regarding the benefcial use of sediments dredged by Ports to counter the coastal sediment defcit, making coastal nourishments mainly supply-driven in mainland Portugal. Beach nourishment practice has evolved to be the major contributor to a regional and national-scale coastal protection strategy focused on coastal sediment management. 1. Introduction Beach nourishment is an environmentally acceptable and viable engineering alternative for shore protection and restoration. It is used in emergency situations as a local and short-term solution (i.e. mitigation of short-term erosion induced by storms), or as a regional and long-term management strategy (i.e. counter erosional tendency and reduce vulnerability to climate change) (Hamm et al., 2002; USAID, 2009). In addition to providing protection to valuable areas of the territory from an environmental and strategic point of view, artifcial beach nourish- ment also preserves the natural state of the beach, while enhancing its recreational use. In certain situations, beach nourishment has the sole objective of improving the comfort of its users, either by increasing the area available to beach activities (Vera-Cruz, 1972) or by changing the grain size of its sediments (Anthony et al., 2011). Preferably, beach nourishment should be based on a coordinated national strategy for mitigation of coastal erosion and recovery/improvement of beach areas that are considered strategic from an environmental, social or economic perspective. In addition, it should take into account the broader sedi- mentary budget, in time and space, aiming to achieve an integrated management of the coastal sediments, from sources to sinks. Beach fll has been used more regularly in the last decades, to the detriment of stabilization measures through the so-called "hard" engi- neering (Cooper et al., 2009). For example, in the United States of America, beach fll performed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers increased considerably in number from the late 1960s/early 1970s, whereas "hard” measures declined, marking a clear change in strategy and expenditure (Hillyer, 1996; Gravens et al., 2006). Unlike "hard" structures, beach flls are designed to have a dynamic and fexible behaviour, compatible with the inherent variability of the natural * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: celso.pinto@apambiente.pt (C.A. Pinto), tanya.silveira@apambiente.pt, tmsilveira@fc.ul.pt (T.M. Silveira), sebastiao.teixeira@apambiente.pt (S.B. Teixeira). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ocean and Coastal Management journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2020.105211 Received 16 September 2019; Received in revised form 6 April 2020; Accepted 7 April 2020