Dataset on beach dynamics and beach wrack washing ashore on the Northern coast of the Sambia Peninsula, the Baltic Sea (Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia)

Kaliningrad Oblast, the westernmost region of Russia, suffers from coastal erosion and abrasion associated with storm activity. Also, recently the issue of seaweed dumping (or beach wrack) ashore has been actively discussed in the Baltic Region (Gorbunova, Chubarenko, 2020; Chubarenko et al., 2021). Beach wracks, on the one hand, negatively affect the tourist attractiveness of beaches, and on the other hand, can serve as a resource for their economic use. To monitor the dynamics of the beach and the release of algae on the coast, the webcam was installed at the northern shore of the Sambia Peninsula (Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). The image covers the shore segment of 40 m with the short groin (25-30 m depending on the position of coastline). The webcam was programmed to automatically receive regular photographs of a part of the beach, which is formed to the west and east of the groin. Daily data on the presence of the beach and beach wrack have been collected. In addition, the procedure to calculate the areas occupied by beach wrack was developed and applied. Data collection period 01.11.2019-31.10.2020 The data is collected in a tabular table, it contains several sheets. Sheet 1 (named "Beach-Wrack_data") shows the presence or absence of beach and beach wrack; it has 5 columns: Date (shooting date, format YYYY-MM-DD), BeachW (beach present / absent west of groin), BeachE (beach present / absent east of groin), WrackW (beach wrack present / absent west of groin), WrackE (beach wrack present / absent east of groin). The absence of the beach / beach wrack is designated as "0". The presence of the beach / beach wrack is designated as "1", but if beach wrack is "many" (more the 25% of study area), then it is indicated as "2". Sheet 2 (named "Wrack_areas") shows the area occupied by beach wrack within the boundaries of the study area; it has 5 columns: Date (shooting date, format YYYY-MM-DD), WrackWest separated to 2 columns "area" and "%" (area (m2) and percentage of beach wrack west of groin), WrackEast separated to 2 columns area and % (area (m2) and percentage of beach wrack east of groin). Sheet 3 (named "Legend") shows legend described above.