Four-month Daily Beach Observations of the Capo Peloro Peninsula, Sicily.

Located at the intersection of land, sea and the air, shoreline is an indispensable parameter for coastal erosion and coastal vulnerability studies. It is well known that the shoreline position is subjected to longshore and cross-shore sediment transports. Such dynamics are typically observed during the winter and summer seasons mainly due to the action of the waves and currents and consequently affect the coast and the beach's morphologies. However, not all the beaches and the coasts respond to these processes the same way. A recent study indicated that wave conditions and physical settings of the beaches are adequately diverse to adapt to regular seasonal cycles of erosion and accretion. Our study intends to investigate the governing processes involved in morphological changes of the highly dynamic sandy beach located on the Capo Peloro Peninsula, Sicily. Four-month daily observations were conducted using remote sensing imagery and fieldwork surveys. Sentinel-2 satellite images acquired in September, October, November and December 2024 were analyzed to extract information related to the shoreline positions. The images were obtained from the Copernicus data space ecosystem. The feature extraction methodological approach was performed using image segmentation to obtain time-series shoreline vector files. Furthermore, the digital shoreline analysis system (DSAS) was used for shoreline statistical change calculations. For the same period, in situ geomorphological analysis was conducted for the estimation and interpretation of horizontal and vertical beach behaviors. The results obtained suggest that Capo Peloro beach respects the classic winter erosion and summer accretion cycles with smaller waves moving beach materials inland during the summer, with larger waves causing the movement of the beach material offshore during the winter season. In addition, we observed longshore beach material transportation due to the alternative NE-SW and NW-SW wave actions. It is important to note that this beach is located on the junction of Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas with different water densities and temperatures, which play a role in the persistence and duration of wave direction and wave power resulting in long-term configuration of the beach morphology.