The primary objective of this project is to increase our understanding of the physical processes that cause coastal change, and ultimately improve our capability to predict the processes and their impacts. This will be approached by using geophysical surveys, oceanographic studies, and predictive models to investigate the interactions of shoreline, nearshore, and offshore sediment transport processes driving coastal change.
Coastal erosion is a pervasive societal problem for much of the world's shoreline. The ability to understand and predict coastal change is critical to mitigating its associated hazards. Two fundamental aspects of the USGS mission are to provide reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth and to minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters. The goal of the Coastal Change Processes Project is to investigate interactions between the shoreline, nearshore, and offshore sediment transport processes that drive coastal change and develop a capability to predict their impacts. To achieve this goal, the project will conduct geophysical surveys to investigate the goelogic framework of the region, deploy oceanographic instrumentation to measure regional physical processes, and develop physics-based models that hindcast these interactions over a variety of spaital and temporal domains. All of these approaches can be integrated into a physics based deterministic predictive system the can forecast changes.
Our current understanding of coastal sediment transport and geology suggests that examining coastal processes at sub-regional (ones to tens of km) to regional scales (100s of km) provides significant insight into coastal zone evolution. The Coastal Change Processes Project is focusing on several key sub-regional areas such as:
- Long Bay, SC: regional coastal erosion with limited sand supply
- Cape Hatteras, NC: local massive sediment convergence processes
- Outer Banks, NC: uninterrupted extensive length of coastline to study variations in alongshore sediment transport
- Fire Island, NY: regional coastal erosion with an extensive sand supply, including a field of offshore shore-face connected sand ridges
Each of these sub-regions has characteristic features and processes that when quantified will contribute to a broader understanding of regional coastal processes. In addition to advancing our understanding of coastal change issues related to storm impacts, sediment budgets, and sediment transport linkages between the beach, shoreface and inner shelf, project research will improve our basic knowledge of coastal ocean circulation and sediment transport processes.
Below are other science projects associated with this project.
Coastal Change Processes- Fire Island, NY
Coastal and Estuarine Dynamics Project
Coastal Change Processes- Cape Hatteras, NC
Coastal Change Processes- South Carolina
Coastal Change Processes- Outer Banks, NC
- Overview
The primary objective of this project is to increase our understanding of the physical processes that cause coastal change, and ultimately improve our capability to predict the processes and their impacts. This will be approached by using geophysical surveys, oceanographic studies, and predictive models to investigate the interactions of shoreline, nearshore, and offshore sediment transport processes driving coastal change.
Coastal erosion is a pervasive societal problem for much of the world's shoreline. The ability to understand and predict coastal change is critical to mitigating its associated hazards. Two fundamental aspects of the USGS mission are to provide reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth and to minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters. The goal of the Coastal Change Processes Project is to investigate interactions between the shoreline, nearshore, and offshore sediment transport processes that drive coastal change and develop a capability to predict their impacts. To achieve this goal, the project will conduct geophysical surveys to investigate the goelogic framework of the region, deploy oceanographic instrumentation to measure regional physical processes, and develop physics-based models that hindcast these interactions over a variety of spaital and temporal domains. All of these approaches can be integrated into a physics based deterministic predictive system the can forecast changes.
Our current understanding of coastal sediment transport and geology suggests that examining coastal processes at sub-regional (ones to tens of km) to regional scales (100s of km) provides significant insight into coastal zone evolution. The Coastal Change Processes Project is focusing on several key sub-regional areas such as:
- Long Bay, SC: regional coastal erosion with limited sand supply
- Cape Hatteras, NC: local massive sediment convergence processes
- Outer Banks, NC: uninterrupted extensive length of coastline to study variations in alongshore sediment transport
- Fire Island, NY: regional coastal erosion with an extensive sand supply, including a field of offshore shore-face connected sand ridges
Each of these sub-regions has characteristic features and processes that when quantified will contribute to a broader understanding of regional coastal processes. In addition to advancing our understanding of coastal change issues related to storm impacts, sediment budgets, and sediment transport linkages between the beach, shoreface and inner shelf, project research will improve our basic knowledge of coastal ocean circulation and sediment transport processes.
- Science
Below are other science projects associated with this project.
Coastal Change Processes- Fire Island, NY
Fire Island, a 50-km long barrier-island system between Fire Island Inlet and Moriches Inlet, attracts significant tourism, includes federal, state, and county parks, contains a number of coastal communities, provides storm damage protection to the adjacent heavily populated mainland, and supports a distinct barrier island ecosystem, all of which are affected by coastal change. Mitigating the...Coastal and Estuarine Dynamics Project
Coastal and Estuarine Dynamics Project exists to support ocean, coastal and estuarine research. The staff have a broad set of skills; from instrument design and development to all forms of work at sea to software development and data management. The team has successfully deployed and recovered more than 1000 data collection platforms for research in the last 30 years.Coastal Change Processes- Cape Hatteras, NC
The most prominent morphologic features along the shoreline of the Carolinas are its four capes. From north to south, Cape Hatteras, Cape Lookout, Cape Fear, and Cape Romain segment the coastline into the northern outer banks, Raleigh Bay, Onslo Bay, and Long Bay regions. Continental shelf areas seaward of the capes are characterized by large, highly dynamic shoal complexes, which influence...Coastal Change Processes- South Carolina
Understanding the processes that control local sediment fluxes is critical in evaluating regional vulnerability to coastal erosion. This project task involves the analysis of observational data collected as part of the South Carolina Coastal Erosion Study (SCCES), and additional coastal process modeling for the Grand Strand region. Modeling based on the physical oceanographic observations will...Coastal Change Processes- Outer Banks, NC
The objective of this task is to improve the capabilities of coastal change models to predict large-scale shoreline change on open-ocean sandy coasts, with specific application to the Northern Outer Banks of North Carolina. Numerical models will be tested and developed using high-resolution observations of geological framework and shoreline change in North Carolina, with the objective of first... - Publications
- Partners