2.2.1. Beach and Dune Mining

Aggregates from beaches and dunes were traditionally used for construction in all coastal settlements, until its negative effect on coastal evolution was perceived; nevertheless, this activity is still, legally or illegally, carried out in many countries. Portobello beach, the 19th century fashionable watering place near Edinburgh, UK, had been the quartz rich sand quarry for glassware manufacturing from 1834 to mid-1930s, until all the white sand was lost, the promenade collapsed, and tourists disappeared [62]. At Poetto, the urban beach of Cagliari, Italy, approximately 2 million cubic meters of sediments were quarried on the beach, mostly for reconstruction of the town after WWII bombing, and this had been the main cause of the beach erosion [63]. In China, during the 1980s, 4000 million tons of beach sands was removed annually [57]. Dune mining along the 18 km of Monterey Bay from 1940 to 1984 was 128,000 m3/year [64], i.e., approximately 7 m3/m/year; when mines were closed the erosion rate decreased, but not significantly.
