Question on beta (beach slope)

[Alerovere]

Hello there, very nice package. I am using it to model some beach ridges in Argentina. I have one doubt, though, about the beach slope. It does not change much (I suppose) but the β (slope) value requested in the inputs is the angle β itself or tan(β) (i.e., height / length of the foreshore zone) ?
The doubt came by looking how Stockdon's equation in his original paper (β, I assume in radians) and how it is reported in several papers after him (tan(β)). To me it makes more sense if that is tan(β), but I can't wrap my mind around this.
Thanks!

[chrisleaman]

Hi Alessio, thanks for the message! Yes, this is probably worth noting in the documentation. I think the β value referred to in Stockdon (2006) is tan β. So your typical values for tan β should be between around 0.05 (very flat) and 0.1 (very steep). I probably need to go back an review the other formulas as well - it looks like I've doubled up on the tan in some cases, thanks for letting me know! 😊

[Alerovere]

Thanks for the prompt answer. In the literature this is not clear at all, too. Most report Stockdon's formula with tan(β) but the original is reported as β.
tan(β) makes more sense as it is dimensionless, while β is an angle and it's either in radians or degrees, and would mess up the units in Stockdon's.
Anyway, it does not change much for such low angles, I suppose. But it would be good to point out.
This is a very neat tool, see how I used it for a paper I'm submitting:

https://zenodo.org/records/10427736

I'll link the preprint as soon as it is available.