Comment on the article “Morphodynamic classification of sandy beaches in low energetic marine environment” by Gómez-Pujol, L., Orfila, A., Cañellas, B., Alvarez-Ellacuria, A., Méndez, F.J., Medina, R. and Tintoré, J. Marine Geology, 242, pp. 235–246, 2007

6 pages, 6 figures, 2 tablesIn a recent study, Gómez-Pujol et al. [Gómez-Pujol, L., Orfila, A., Cañellas, B., Alvarez-Ellacuria, A., Méndez, F.J., Medina, R., Tintoré, J., 2007. Morphodynamic classification of sandy beaches in low energetic marine environment. Mar. Geol. 242, pp. 235–246] used the Wright and Short beach classification scheme fed with hindcasted wave and sediment settling velocity data to classify the morphodynamic states of a group of low-energy Mediterranean beaches (Mallorca, Spain). Here, we use morphodynamic data obtained from an Argus video station and a morphodynamic model to assess the validity of this type of model for predicting beach states under typical Mediterranean wave conditions. The results show that Ω-values alone do not provide a realistic prediction of beach states statistics and that the intensity of the forcing, represented by the wave energy level and the duration of the events, must also be taken into accountThe first author was supported by a University Research Promotion Award for Young Researchers from the Autonomous Government of Catalonia. This study was partially carried out under the framework of the PUDEM research project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education under contract REN2003-06637-C02/MARPeer reviewe