Sandy beaches and multiple barred nearshore zones are common features along many coastlines of the world. The behaviour of these beaches and nearshore zones may be studied on different scales, both temporal and spatial. These scales range from the grain to grain interactions over seconds to the scale of coastline evolution over centuries. The coastline of the central part of the Netherlands, the Holland coast, consists of sandy beaches and multiple barred nearshore zones. The understanding of the behaviour of this coastline is one of the main goals of the Dutch research project "coastal genesis', which started in 1986. In this project many studies are executed, ranging from the detailed mechanics of the sediment transport processes to the Holocene development of the coastal plain. Successive chapters deal with: the study area, hydrodynamics and sediment fluxes, small-scale morphological behaviour of the beach, meso-scale morphological behavior of the nearshore zone, and synthesis of sediment transport and morphodynamics. -after Author