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11 - Hot Topics in Coastal with the Hosts
6 Plays1 year ago
In this month’s episode of Going Coastal, your favorite co-hosts dive into three major topics affecting our shorelines:
👟 Sneaker Waves – Marissa unpacks some of the physics behind these sudden, powerful waves that have taken people by surprise—where do they occur and what makes them so dangerous?
🏝️ Nuisance Erosion – Jon explores this under-the-radar issue that’s affecting beaches and infrastructure. It’s not storm-driven, but it’s happening every day—what does it mean for coastal communities?
🏗️ The Sand Resource Crisis – Deb takes us into the hidden world of sand scarcity. As the second most-extracted resource after water, sand is disappearing rapidly due to global demand. How are we related to sand and what are the implications for coastal engineers?
We hope you enjoy this episode! Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, rate and share with your friends and colleagues! We’d much appreciate it <3
🔗Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Y8qMl4i6STqkC6VL6sNCn?si=AgdGC5wmQtaNDjuxIXdlKA
#GoingCoastal #Podcast #CoastalEngineering #SneakerWaves #NuisanceErosion #SandWars #CoastalManagement
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome back to the Going Coastal podcast, the podcast of the Students and New Professionals hosted by John Miller, Marissa Torres, and Deb Fernandez. And I'm one of your co-hosts, Marissa Torres.
00:00:20
Speaker
And I'm John. And I'm also another co-host, Deb Fernandez. Look at us. We're all here.
Seasonal Iced Coffee
00:00:27
Speaker
Yay. It's the three of us. John has a drink with ice in it.
00:00:31
Speaker
He's going to be distracting this episode, but we're just going to have a good time and let him drink his iced coffee at 5 p.m. Okay?
00:00:41
Speaker
My response is it's sunny. It's 60 degrees out, and it's the first iced coffee of the season, so i don't care. I'm enjoying my coffee. Wow. 60 degrees?
00:00:54
Speaker
How pleasant. Deb, how warm is it down there, though? Oh, it's colder than usual. How is it in Fahrenheit? It's probably in the 17th.
00:01:06
Speaker
Metric. metric I'm sorry, but it's like it's super nice in the morning. How many Celsius? but During the day, it's like 23, 24 Celsius. And then at night, it's like 10.
00:01:19
Speaker
Super cold.
00:01:21
Speaker
Zero is at 32. Right. Got that one. And I think. And at minus 40, they're both the same. That's the conversion we can make. Zero.
00:01:37
Speaker
We're doing great, guys. Can't you tell? um Happy March to everybody. We're kind of the three of us kind of getting together. ah to talk about some things that we're
Personal Opinions Disclaimer
00:01:51
Speaker
interested in. And I will shout out a disclaimer due to current events.
00:01:57
Speaker
ah The views and opinions expressed in this podcast by myself, Marissa, are mine alone and do not reflect the views, opinions, or position taken by my organization or chain of command.
00:02:13
Speaker
And with that, hot fun times in the coastal world, huh? so Yeah. Yeah. Life is interesting.
00:02:26
Speaker
We're having a good time. Everything's great. Let's talk about some nerdy stuff. That's what we do, right? That's when when when when things get interesting, we can always talk about science. So that's what we'll do.
00:02:42
Speaker
unless it's criminalized. However, where it hasn't happened yet. So we're having a good time. Yeah. yeah So Deb, what did you want to talk about?
Geology and Sand
00:02:54
Speaker
Me? What I wanted to talk about? What is your science-y, geeky topic of the day? It's our table of contents before we jump into the chapters. So I wanted to talk about send Because that's what brought me here.
00:03:15
Speaker
And it's like, I think the connection between geology and coastal engineering. And so, yeah, I love sand. I think we all should. Nice.
00:03:26
Speaker
Except when it gets in between your toes, right? Can we all agree on that? No, we should cherish those. we love sand. Malt-share us those? I love sand. I have this argument all the time with my wife about sand in the car. I think sand is not dirt.
00:03:42
Speaker
Sand is santa sand. It's just a part of life. It's it's fine. like It doesn't bother me at all. My wife disagrees. ah Well, I'll have you, John, with me on on that discussion, and we're going to convince Marissa to love sand at the end of this topic. It's like, I love the beach, however, I'm not a fan of the sand.
00:04:06
Speaker
Is there a beach without sand? There are They're called gravel or cobblestone beaches. Do you like those? I don't get to them very often. Well, let me tell you, when you put a towel on them and you try to lay down, doesn't feel like sand at all. It's very different.
00:04:23
Speaker
I'm usually not laying down on those beaches. Yeah, exactly.
00:04:31
Speaker
All right. We got sand from Deb. John likes sand, but what are you talking about?
Nuisance Erosion Discussion
00:04:38
Speaker
I'm going to talk about erosion in particular, sort of lower impact. That's related sand? Yeah. Like, yes, it's related to sand and it's related to water, which is what you're going to talk about.
00:04:50
Speaker
So I'm kind of the bridge in between you and Deb, although you're going to do some high-end water stuff. That's kind of related.
00:05:02
Speaker
Kind of related. But specifically, we're going to talk about nuisance erosion. which is a nuisance erosion. Yeah. Kind of interesting. Everybody focuses on big storms and impacts of those types of events. But I want to talk a little bit more about sort of everyday type of erosion.
00:05:24
Speaker
Sure. That sounds great. Do want to move from water to onshore?
Sneaker Waves Explained
00:05:31
Speaker
Sure. Well, what water thing are you going to talk about since you're the water going to talk about sneaker waves. Not sneakers and waves. Two your favorite things. Sneakers and waves.
00:05:43
Speaker
John does have an excellent sneakers collection. it is in the background of his video right now. so Yeah, he wasn't lying when he was saying that sneakers and waves were his favorite things. so like But how many pairs of sneakers do you have?
00:06:00
Speaker
Uh, two, uh, probably about 20 if I had to guess, more or less. That's it? Ah, it's not we're going crazy crazy. How many did you have before you got married?
00:06:13
Speaker
Like three. Okay. I thought we were going to have like more of the bachelor lifestyle with like all of the sneakers and then you had to pare down to make room for her shoes too.
00:06:27
Speaker
No, it's it's more of a recent obsession of mine. So it's my, you know, i don't, it's like you got everybody's got their thing, right? I don't like, ah I don't like, i don't go golfing. I don't, you know, have expensive hobbies.
00:06:40
Speaker
However, ah do like to collect sneakers. It's like works of art that I get to wear. I like it. That's pretty cool. I'll let it pass. I'll allow it.
00:06:53
Speaker
You're allowed your thing. Yeah. All right. I have too many expensive hobbies that we don't need to get into. um Let's move from water to the shore and go from there.
00:07:11
Speaker
So we're just going to get... waves out of the way first. I'm a waves person. i didn't necessarily ask for this life. I knew that waves were hard when I learned about them in grad school, but here I am still doing waves.
00:07:27
Speaker
Thank you, Professor Grilly, for teaching me as much as you could.
00:07:33
Speaker
So, yeah, we're going to talk about sneaker waves. So on January 20th, 2024, one or more of these sneaker waves struck the United States Army base on Roy Namor in the Kwadralene Atoll located in the Marshall Islands.
00:07:54
Speaker
And there is this kind of viral video when it came out of ah this guy was recording inside of a dining hall and they're just wave upon wave washing up onto shore, into the building, blowing out the doors, knocking people off their feet.
00:08:11
Speaker
Google it. it's It's pretty wild. And it was a pretty significant event, especially for a low-lying island and pretty destructive for an army installation there. And so there's been a lot of attention on sneaker waves following this event. There was another event in 2016 or 2014, I think, that happened also at this army base in the Marshall Islands.
00:08:41
Speaker
You should definitely check out the video. It's spelt R-O-I-N-A-M-U-R, Roy Namur. like sneaker wave. You can, you can watch the video. It's insane.
00:08:54
Speaker
But this wave actually penetrated up to 300 feet or a hundred meters inland and had kind of like that storm wall of
00:09:07
Speaker
20 to 40 feet and with a significant wave height of like 10 to 15 feet. So we're looking at a significant wave of like three to five meters on an already low lying piece of land in the middle of the Pacific.
00:09:23
Speaker
So you can imagine how how scary this event is when it's completely unpredicted or or unpredictable rather, and it can come out of nowhere.
00:09:35
Speaker
So that's what makes these waves dangerous and also why they call them sneaker waves. They can kind of sneak up on you. So what about the term freak wave?
00:09:47
Speaker
Is that the same or different? Good question. The primary difference between a sneaker wave and like a freak wave or a rogue wave are that rogue waves are usually offshore wave events and sneaker waves are more of those nearshore wave ah nearhore wave events So a rogue wave is typically described as having a wave height that's at least twice the height of its surrounding waves versus sneaker waves. They're nearshore and they don't have one significant wave height that is larger than the rest. It's more of a general
00:10:29
Speaker
increase in a water level that regular waves are riding on and that propagate further up the shore than you would typically expect in like a set of waves.
00:10:41
Speaker
Sneaker waves are the popular term for them. They can also be called sleeper waves or just wave run-up events. And these types of events are most common in areas with a narrow continental shelf.
00:10:55
Speaker
So you're looking at the Pacific coast, specifically the Pacific Northwest or even Western Canada, the southern coast of Iceland, for example, and even Western Australia. So even Aussies refer to these waves as king waves.
00:11:14
Speaker
I don't know what the relation is between king waves and our king tides, for example. Ah, the Aussies. The Aussies just make stuff up. And they have a good time doing it.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah. I'm actually surprised. It's it's it's such a, i guess, proper term for wave. Usually they have more fun with it, I feel like. just A king wave instead of something more outrageous?
00:11:43
Speaker
well the ah like the the the the Australian slang tends to be more fun is the way that I like look at it so like when you're eating breakfast or you're eating brekkie like brekkie is just more fun than breakfast but like king king wave versus sneaker wave I actually think sneaker wave is more fun than king wave so we've got one over on the Aussies Oh my God, are you trying to give you credit for it?
00:12:09
Speaker
Like, oh, we have a fun term. um Eventually we're going to get to a Portuguese term for sneaker wave.
00:12:21
Speaker
Are we? We'll go Spanish. We're going to go whole full gamut. We're going to every language. gonna go the whole full gamut we're gonna go every language I had never heard of them before. They must exist. I was going to say they must exist, right? Whether or not there's It's only common in certain areas, though. Only certain geographic locations experience these kinds of events.
00:12:44
Speaker
it because of And in general, they're just large wave run-up events. Unexpected wave run-up events. like they They can happen on a sunny day. That's part of what makes them dangerous is that everything will be totally normal and fine on the beach. And then all of a sudden there's this surge just rushing up the shore that can move rock, driftwood.
00:13:07
Speaker
It's carrying sand and gravel sometimes. um They can be very dangerous. Yeah, but if we called them large wave run-up events, they wouldn't be very interesting. Good point.
00:13:19
Speaker
Sneaker waves, sleeper waves, much much more, probably get many more people studying them. And that's why sneaker wave is most popular branding of this type of wave.
00:13:32
Speaker
There you go. So let's learn where these events come from, shall we?
Causes of Sneaker Waves
00:13:38
Speaker
Yes, please. So research out of Oregon State University or OSU suggests that there is no one distinct cause for sneaker wave generation.
00:13:48
Speaker
It's a product of multiple factors, mostly a far offshore storm, cyclogenesis kind of storm out in the Pacific Basin, for example.
00:13:59
Speaker
that is producing these high winds and high winds produce your typical sea swell waves near shore. So we know about wave groupiness. No, we don't. Yes.
00:14:11
Speaker
Explain, Marissa. Well, I wasn't exactly prepared to go into a wave mechanic situation. So I can give you kind of the bare bones gist of wave groupiness. And if you're interested in learning more, you can check out the coastal wiki online. That's a not a bad resource. And hopefully it can point you to some more resources about linear wave theory.
00:14:36
Speaker
The gist of it is wind blowing across the ocean surface creates these ripples. These ripples over time and over distance kind of become the traditional swell waves that we'll see near shore.
00:14:50
Speaker
And so waves tend to form in these clusters that we call groups. And they'll have kind of an underlying... amplitude change where there's the sets of groups where it's kind of smaller amplitude waves and then it grows into bigger amplitude waves and then it comes back down into smaller amplitude waves and then you hit a node where it kind of settles out.
00:15:14
Speaker
So when you see surfers looking for these sets of waves, these are the traditional wave groups that you see coming near shore. Thank you for our listeners who are not coastal engineers yet.
00:15:27
Speaker
That's why i always ask the question. making it Making Dr. Gurley proud there. I'm doing my best. So these swell waves that you typically see near shore...
00:15:39
Speaker
these waves are known as surface gravity waves. These are the waves that we'll see, they're riding on the surface. Now, the sneaky part about sneaker waves are that these surface gravity waves are feeding energy to an underlying set of waves that are a longer period,
00:15:59
Speaker
and kind of contribute to the overall wave setup that you'll see onshore on a beach. And these longer period waves riding underneath the surface waves are called infragravity waves.
00:16:14
Speaker
They generally have a period somewhere between 20 seconds up to like five minutes, maybe even a little bit more. It's kind of like a mini tsunami. What makes them a little more scary is that, say in a tsunami, there's generally an event that occurs and you can kind of estimate when that tsunami wave is going to be approaching near shore and there's a retreat of water as ah as as the tsunami wave comes in.
00:16:43
Speaker
With these large wave run-up events with sneaker waves, there is no
Sneaker Wave Safety
00:16:49
Speaker
retreat. All of a sudden, you're just kind of on the beach. Typical surface waves are going on.
00:16:55
Speaker
Then all of a sudden, you may notice that the waves start breaking a little bit closer or further up the shore than before, but it doesn't happen slowly.
00:17:07
Speaker
these tend to happen almost instantaneously. And that's kind of where we get into the dangerous aspect of it. so So what are the impacts of these sneaker waves?
00:17:20
Speaker
Why are you interested in them yet? So like that large wave event out in the Marshall Islands on the Kwajalein Atoll, the sneaker wave upon arriving can surge more than 150 or meters beyond that swash beyond that foam line where waves are typically breaking.
00:17:42
Speaker
And this surge wave can run up the beach with great force. And like I said, it could sometimes be carrying sand, gravel. It can move heavy driftwood up the beach slope.
00:17:54
Speaker
it's It's scary. And for the most part, it's unpredictable. We don't really have a solid... handle on how to track, monitor, predict these types of events. We just have to really stay vigilant in areas where we know that they're prevalent.
00:18:13
Speaker
So in areas like the Pacific Northwest, in California and Oregon, for example, we know that these sneaker waves tend to occur mostly in the winter months due to offshore storms in the Pacific Basin.
00:18:27
Speaker
So generally between October and like March, April, there, the probability of a sneaker wave event is a little bit higher. In California and Oregon combined since I think 1990, there's been over a dozen people that have been taken by surprise and have actually been killed by these types of events.
00:18:47
Speaker
So we really need to make sure that if we are visiting the Pacific Northwest during those months that we're staying informed of the tide tables, high and low tide, kind trying to maybe stay off the beach during that high tide period, and always be watching the ocean. Never turn your back on waves.
00:19:09
Speaker
Other things that you can do to kind of stay aware are to kind of avoid being on like jetty or breakwater rocks or being around driftwood during these months maybe.
00:19:20
Speaker
And I will say that if you do see some of these waves kind of, they're looking like they're going to break a little bit closer to you, just start to back up, get yourself to higher ground.
00:19:32
Speaker
And again, just stay vigilant and don't turn your back on the wave. Now, once you are safe and on higher ground, it would actually be really awesome if you took a video and posted that to YouTube.
00:19:44
Speaker
It helps scientists and engineers kind of see firsthand what's happening and to be able to validate almost or kind of ah kind of double check ground truth almost ah with any observations that we might have in the area, whether it's a nearby tide gauge that picked up a long or an increased elevation signal.
00:20:07
Speaker
We would be able to more accurately identify these signals in our wave and water level measurements, and hopefully they would be able to contribute to tracking, monitoring, or predicting them.
00:20:22
Speaker
Oh, thank you. I did not know about them. So that was really cool. It's kind of scary too. If anybody is scared of the beach or the ocean in those areas, after hearing Marissa, don't know if I would want to go in the sea again. so just Just move moved to the East Coast or the Gulf of Mexico, somewhere where it's ah less likely to happen, right?
00:20:45
Speaker
The Gulf Coast. Yeah. golf or something or other. The golf. The golf ghost. We don't want to get canceled. The golf. The golf. The golf. Let's just call it that.
00:20:56
Speaker
i was wondering, ah Australians call it, you said, king wave. Mm-hmm. Is it related to king tides by any chance? like I don't think so. Does those events happen during king tides?
00:21:07
Speaker
I don't think so, no. I think they're they're separate terms. I'm not sure if Aussies have king tides in the same way we do. It's that relationship back to England, that whole monarchy thing. Was that like a really ignorant statement?
00:21:23
Speaker
they must They have tides. They obviously have. They probably have king tide events, but... and um I couldn't tell you why they call them King Waves.
00:21:34
Speaker
They probably have a different nickname for King Tides. i don't know. They might. I don't think they do. I would hope those are Something fun. I don't know. But yeah, super cool. Yeah.
00:21:45
Speaker
So waves are pretty destructive to our coastline and they move sand and sediment everywhere. So.
Nuisance Erosion and Beach Nourishment
00:21:54
Speaker
So anyway, so the topic that i was going to talk about is something that we at Stevens are called nuisance erosion.
00:22:06
Speaker
And when we say nuisance erosion, kind of what we are talking about are lower intensity, more frequent types of storms that cause erosion, not the type of you know massive erosion that you get in hurricanes or big nor'easters, but more of what we call sort of like every day or every winter um type of erosion that we see here in New Jersey.
00:22:33
Speaker
um And we kind of got interested in the topic because we would have a series of, we've had a series of relatively mild winters in terms of coastal storms.
00:22:46
Speaker
And would continue to get people who sort of calling us up and saying, hey, what's going on? You know, our beaches are eroding. And we would say, well, it it wasn't really a major storm.
00:22:59
Speaker
And so we tend to get sort of an accumulation of these these lower intensity, but ah more frequent events. And they cause big problems in our coastal communities.
00:23:12
Speaker
um And so we kind of realized that not very many people were studying these because it's much more popular or interesting, I guess, maybe to study these large coastal storms. um So then we started to do some research where we were looking into sea level rise and climate change and kind of the impacts on coastal storms, big and small.
00:23:31
Speaker
And you know through some of that research, um we were were coming up with some data which seemed seem to indicate that these nuisance level events were more likely to increase in frequency in the future.
00:23:50
Speaker
and One of the the question might be, why did we what's a nuis what do we mean by nuisance? Like, where that term come from? So the the the term is kind of meant to to kind of relay some sort of similarity to nuisance flooding. So everybody's heard of nuisance flooding, right? Or sunny day flooding.
00:24:09
Speaker
I have not. And that's the type of... No, I'm sorry. Maybe. Never heard of that? don't remember. Sorry. So, you know, you're more typical, like every high tide or every couple of high tides and spring tide, king tides, certain areas will flood that didn't used to flood and it can happen on a sunny day. So there's no necessarily storm that's associated with it But it's a nuisance to the community, right? The public, they can't you know they can't go to work, they can't go to school, they can't get their kids to soccer practice, all those things. It's not you know damaging per se, other than the fact that it's a bit of a nuisance.
00:24:43
Speaker
So by analogy, you know, these storms that are causing these nuisance erosion events, sometimes they can be storms that are way offshore. So we can get some swell that's coming in and we can get some impacts on the beach that, um you know, are not necessarily associated with a rainy, windy, you know, terrible day at the beach. So we began to think these are kind of similar to the sunny day flooding or or nuisance flooding.
00:25:12
Speaker
nuisance flooding events. So that's where we got the term from. i think one of the things that we've been kind of finding that's a little bit different with these events versus a nuisance flooding event is a nuisance flooding event happens and water comes up and it goes away.
00:25:29
Speaker
And so the water's gone, you know, six hours later or eight hours later, 12 hours later. So up on high tide disappears by low tide and things more or less go back to normal within the community.
00:25:41
Speaker
um with nuisance erosion, the problem is that erosion doesn't happen and then get fix itself 12 hours later.
Erosion, Dunes, and Sea Level Rise
00:25:50
Speaker
right So, um the cumulative impacts of these, what we call nuisance storms, are something that we think in the future are gonna become important, particularly when we think about like designing things like beach nourishment projects, right? So we think about a beach nourishment project, we typically say, what's your design storm?
00:26:12
Speaker
So is it a 20 year storm, a 50 year storm, a 100 year storm? Well, that's great. But if in the interim between this 100 year storms, you have, you know, and wouldn let's just say you have ah five-year event or a 10-year event.
00:26:27
Speaker
If those start to become more frequent and you end up with 10 five-year events or 10 two-year events, um and you essentially start to carve out the beach little by little, it's kind of the the death by a thousand cuts sort of analogy.
00:26:43
Speaker
um And... You know, if you don't consider that, and when we think about the design of whether it's beach nourishments or coastal structures or um any sort of resilience project, you know, again, as these storms become more frequent in the future, we could have some problems.
00:27:05
Speaker
So that's what a nuisance erosion event is and why we get interested in them and kind of you know, why we started to study them.
00:27:16
Speaker
Are they primarily dominated by just total water level, total water level and waves? So are they more, is it more common in areas that do have king tides, for example?
00:27:29
Speaker
think it's it's both, really. And, you know, I think the the characteristics. So, you know, that's one of my other sort of pet peeves is kind of you really can't really separate like the the wave impacts from the water level impacts because the two work together that and the duration of the storm.
00:27:47
Speaker
Right. So all three of those things are kind of working together. um I think one of the differences in terms of whether it's a wave-induced event or a wave event or a storm surge event is kind of where the erosion is focused, right? So in many cases, if it's a wave-induced event and your wave energy is focused on the berm, so...
00:28:12
Speaker
Typically speaking, if that erosion happens, um there's going to be a more rapid recovery. So sand gets eroded off the beach face, gets put into a sandbar. Sandbar eventually works its way back on shore. That's the typical cross shore exchange of sediment that happens.
00:28:27
Speaker
um If it's more of a surge driven event and the waves get up into the dune, you start to carve out the dune, that's going to take longer to recover. So, you know, and that, and that becomes, that's related to that sea level rise component, because as sea level rises, basically the toe of the dune becomes more vulnerable to those impacts. It takes a smaller storm surge to actually hit the, or start to carve at the, at the toe of the dune.
00:28:54
Speaker
Um, So those can be those can be more damaging or take longer to recover from. So that acute that cumulative effect of multiple small level storms, if those storms are still reaching into the dune, then that can be a problem.
00:29:10
Speaker
think the other thing that's kind of related to this is specifically for dunes and the way that dunes build and recover is that if you have these cumulative events on the beach face that are carving out the even the berm, right, narrowing the berm,
00:29:26
Speaker
it can influence or impact the ability of a sand dune to recover. So dunes grow by aeolian transport, right? So wind blowing over the beach. So if you are continuously carving away at the beach, narrowing the beach, right? You're limiting the source of sediment for any wind blown transport back into the dune, right? So it's sort of this cumulative impact of, know,
00:29:49
Speaker
you know You carve away the dune, you narrow the beach, there's not enough sand to have the dune fully recover. and so You have this process where you're marching sort of marching slowly towards ah ah ah beach state that is extremely or significantly more vulnerable than what you might anticipate from any one of these individual storms.
00:30:16
Speaker
Good question and long answer. My students would be very proud. Very long answer. Excellent job. But I do want to know, what is a berm and where is that on the beach? If I'm ah if i'm a beach goer, remind me where the berm is. So that's true. We got to like cater to all audiences, right? So the berm is essentially the beach blanket space is the way that we refer to it in New Jersey. It's the the part of the beach that's the flat part where you put out your beach blankets and everybody kind of chills and drinks their beverage of choice and and hangs out and and has a good time.
00:30:52
Speaker
And that's another impact, right? And that's like, you know, for a location like New Jersey that relies on coastal tourism for big part of their economy, right? If you have these cumulative impacts and your beach goes from, you know, 200 feet wide 150 feet wide to 100 wide, to a hundred feet wide eventually you get to a point where you're shrinking the amount of space for people, to hang out and it makes your particular community less ideal in some cases. So people are going to go to the, you know, the the town, you know, three miles away that has the wider beach because there's more space.
00:31:28
Speaker
So there's economic impacts, you know, in terms of like recreational use of the beach. And then ultimately, you know, if communities are, are repairing their beach after these nuisance events, right? It becomes, you know, every year you have to put aside $10,000 or $100,000 to repair your beach from these lower level storm events.
00:31:52
Speaker
You know, that becomes something that is, you know, not really sustainable for communities, so I will never forget the first time that I went to California.
00:32:03
Speaker
Growing up on the East Coast, the first time that I went to a California beach was, i think, my senior year of undergrad. And...
00:32:14
Speaker
um I went to Santa Monica Beach and I was so impressed by like how wide the beach was. I'm like, wow, this is like as wide as the whole state of Rhode Island. This is amazing.
00:32:25
Speaker
Like there's so much sand and so much room for activities here. And that's just not what we have on the on the East Coast. No, definitely not. I love Santa Monica Beach.
00:32:38
Speaker
West Coast beaches are awesome. East Coast beaches are cool too. All beaches are cool, just in different ways. But if you go a little bit further up Malibu, they have no beach at all. Like it's super, super short. Yeah, yeah.
00:32:50
Speaker
I think it really depends where. I don't know if replenish the one in Santa Monica but probably. Uh, I'm not sure. I think, I guess, I think probably they do. and i think, really I think they think they do, but, um, it also is more of a naturally, more naturally stable than, than up in Malibu.
00:33:07
Speaker
So, but yeah, the beaches in the West coast with the, the, the massive wide surf zones and the, big waves that you get during the winter are crazy for somebody who's an East Coaster. I didn't, I'd never, ah hadn't visited, and didn't go to a West Coast beach until I think I went to the Oregon coast and when I was in grad school.
00:33:30
Speaker
That was the first time I had me out to the West Coast. And it was, and we actually visited during a ah storm and was just kind of amazing, it's kind of like, holy crap, these waves are big.
00:33:44
Speaker
I don't think I've ever been to an East Coast beach. Or maybe in Rhode Island. We did went to the beach for a little bit after a conference, but I don't think I've ever.
00:33:59
Speaker
Which beach? Southern Shore? I think it was like south of Providence, yeah. Don't remember which one. Most the rest of the state is south of Providence. The rest of the great, good part of the state is south of Providence. Fair enough.
New Jersey Coastline Insights
00:34:13
Speaker
But I've never been to a New Jersey beach or whatever. How are they different? How are they different? New Jersey beaches are the most awesomest beaches in the world. So we can start there.
00:34:27
Speaker
No, we have New Jersey's New Jersey's is an interesting place because we have very diverse beaches. Um, actually one of my, one of my PhD, uh, former PhD students and colleagues, uh, Matt Jansen, who's been a guest on going coastal way back, probably in season one, if I had to guess one or two,
00:34:45
Speaker
um has a great ah ah great slide that he uses whenever we give presentations because a lot of times we're using data from New Jersey's beaches. And you know he's he's come across, and i guess we've encountered the the bias where we do a study and somebody comes back and says, well, you only looked at beaches in one state. like What does that mean?
00:35:07
Speaker
And his comparison is that he throws up a slide that compares the length of the New Jersey coastline with the length of the Dutch coastline. And the length of the New Jersey coastline is actually as much or more than the Dutch coastline.
00:35:24
Speaker
So if somebody were to say like, hey, we did a study and we looked at all the beaches and in the Netherlands, right? You'd be like, oh, that's cool. They did like, there's a like a big diversity of beaches there. And like, you wouldn't necessarily question, um I guess the, the,
00:35:37
Speaker
The variability, you'd assume that there is variability there, but New Jersey has just as much coastline as the entire country of the Netherlands. And when you look at our beach, we have beaches with no dunes and we have beaches with dunes that are...
00:35:55
Speaker
15 or more, 15 to 20 feet tall in some cases. So we have really big dunes and we have absolutely no dunes. And we have really narrow beaches and we have really wide beaches. We have beaches that, wildwood beaches are...
00:36:09
Speaker
thousands of feet wide, probably close to at least a quarter of a mile wide. Like it's just one big flat, flat, flat beach.
00:36:20
Speaker
um And then we have really steep and narrow beaches as well. We have beaches with sediments that are, you know, 0.2 millimeters or even smaller than that all the way up to like 0.6 millimeters so we have steep course sediment sand beaches to fine almost muddy beaches um on our atlantic coast we've got dunes that are sort of call them typical core of engineers dunes nice big trapezoidal engineered dunes to we have places where we have
00:36:56
Speaker
ah coastal maritime forests backing our dunes. Avalon's got an amazing, you want to talk about a dune that's got dune, it's got grasses, it's got shrubs, it's got literally trees in the dune.
00:37:10
Speaker
We have that. And that's not something that people think about when they think about New Jersey, because they think about like a developed coastline. So we do have our share of those as well. But I think for me, that's one of the things that makes New Jersey so interesting is that we do have this sort of diversity of coastline.
00:37:25
Speaker
And it's all, I mean, it takes us, takes me maybe two and a half hours to go from the northern coast to the southern coast of New Jersey. So within this two and a half hour range of driving, We've got you know all of these different shorelines that we can study.
00:37:38
Speaker
So it makes it a really interesting place to work and cool thing cool place to like try out different ideas. you know But yeah, New Jersey is awesome.
00:37:52
Speaker
That's pretty cool. Nice answer. Well done. You do love New Jersey. I love that ah Question. um Since there is so much diversity, do you know where your sediment come from? Because you said you have like pebbles all the way up to like silt and mud. It comes from a variety of places. So we have...
00:38:14
Speaker
Some offshore sediment deposits, we have sediment deposits sediment that comes out of, we have some sediment, like the the some of the finer stuff in the south southern part of the state comes out of the mouth of the Delaware River.
00:38:26
Speaker
that's some of the the beaches that have a little bit more of a higher silt and almost muddy ah content. Some of that comes out there. um We have our share of coastal headlands that, well, not coastal headlands, coastal bluffs.
00:38:41
Speaker
um So in the area of like Long Branch and Deal, we have some coastal bluffs, which originally eroded and created some sediment. So a lot of different sources of sediment along the New Jersey coast. We have a handful of inlets, um rivers and ah other inlets that you know used to historically contribute some sediment, but like most places at this point,
00:39:04
Speaker
You know, rivers and bays are mostly bulkheaded and protected, which limits any source of sediment from coming out of those areas now.
00:39:17
Speaker
And beach nourishment, quite honestly. I think in New Jersey, our beaches are generally stable. um If you look at sort of some of the reports, the USGS reports, the erosion reports,
00:39:29
Speaker
ah A lot of our beaches are stable. Stockton University does a lot of our monitoring of our beaches as well. And, you know, a big portion of the state is stable.
00:39:41
Speaker
And a big part of that is because of the beach nourishment process. effects So we've had, i think every every single beach along the Atlantic coast of New Jersey has been studied and almost all have been minus the one is the state parks and some of the natural areas.
00:40:00
Speaker
Almost all of those have had sediment at one point or another in time. So you can't discount that source of sediment if you're in New Jersey. Is it your primary direction of sediment transport north or south along the coast? both Both. It it depends it depends on which district of the Corps of Engineers you work So if you work for the new york and then the New York district, basically is the northern portion of our coastline, and the sediment actually moves to the north.
00:40:28
Speaker
um So I don't know if it was... the district i don't I doubt the district was actually set up that way, but the northern part from about Manusquan Inlet to the north, sediment moves to the north and from south of that point to the south, it moves south.
00:40:42
Speaker
And that's the Philadelphia district of the core. So they kind of have these two natural, almost, if you wanted to talk about regional sediment management, it's kind of like a really cool, ah it's the perfect spot to split the responsibilities of the the two districts.
00:40:59
Speaker
neat. But yeah. That brings us to sand and sediment. Deb, tell us about sand.
00:41:06
Speaker
Oh, sand. Sand nerd. Yeah. Quick roundtable. What does sand mean to both of you in the context of crystal work? sand is ah is a specific grain size of sediment. So if we're just talking in general sediment, right? Like sand is a certain classification of sediment type ah based off of its diameter, its size. In terms of what it means to me, i don't like it when it gets in between my toes.
00:41:36
Speaker
Or like, what's your relationship to sand basically? In terms of your work my professional relationship with sand is that it's difficult to model. So sediment transport modeling and like particle tracking and all of this stuff is actually still a question mark. It's still kind of a black box. Like we've gotten some things down. We can kind of estimate where it's going, but because of the time scales of How sediment moves around, it makes it very tricky and it is very location specific due to the processes that are in a specific area.
00:42:13
Speaker
So all around tricky and ah we have a lot of trouble with sediment in our inlets as we try to manage and maintain federal navigation channels and and other inlets for safety, whether it's commercial or recreational boating safety.
00:42:35
Speaker
And you, John? I love sand. Sand is awesome. Yeah, I mean, so a lot of the things that Marissa said are true.
00:42:45
Speaker
i mean, for me, like the majority of my work focuses on and more or less sediment transport, but i would say more from sort of larger scale sort of ah call it bulk sediment transport or the way but I'll put it this way. When I was in grad school, I took littoral processes, which was sort of literal cell focused or large scale sediment transport coastal processes of sediment transport class.
00:43:09
Speaker
I took a cohesive sediment transport class and I took one other set. I literally took three sediment transport transport classes plus littoral processes. And to me, literal processes is the one that stuck with me the most.
00:43:21
Speaker
And because of some of those frustrations that Marissa mentioned in terms of, you know, the more, call it micro scale sediment transport processes and being very difficult to model it. I've always been interested in things like my PhD was on equilibrium shoreline modeling, right? So it was erosion, but from sort of a macro level, like bird's eye view kind of literal processes scale. So I've Always been interested in sort of the engineering scale of sediment transport.
00:43:47
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, I was a Bob Dean student, right? So like equilibrium beach profiles and sort of literal processes is kind of, that's my comfort zone when it comes to sediment.
00:43:58
Speaker
Pretty awesome. And I agree. I love c sin too. And now another round table. What's your relationship with sin on your daily life? That's where it gets into Marissa's toes and she gets uncomfortable. You know, I don't live near the ocean anymore. So when I do get to travel, I like going for walks on the beach.
00:44:19
Speaker
But how do you keep the sand out your toes? They usually have little little fountains to wash your feet off afterwards.
00:44:30
Speaker
You done? Yeah. mean, they that's kind of, you know, I guess on like the personal level, there are definitely beaches that I enjoy more. Right. So like yeah I'll use the sand between the toes analogy. Right.
00:44:44
Speaker
So there's coarse sediment and you get that between your toes and it's like a little in your shoe and it's a little crunchy and it's like more uncomfortable. And then there are certain more finer beaches like, you know, mentioned Wildwood before. So that's one of our more fine. It's almost,
00:45:00
Speaker
It's almost powdery and it's ah it's got a completely different feeling. And so like walking on those beaches is it's like almost walking on like pillows. Like it's it's cool. Like I love that.
00:45:11
Speaker
I love the the sensation of that sentiment. So that's my I mean, like, honestly, i would rather have the coarse sediment between my toes and the pill and the pillowy sediment because it's just like fines just all up in there. And then it just like never it feels like it and you can never get it off.
00:45:29
Speaker
It's like baby powder. It's like, it it's awesome. This discussion went i around. I was not sure. I hope nobody has a foot issue that they can't.
00:45:42
Speaker
They're not. What's the opposite of a a foot phobia? of
Sand in Everyday Life and Scarcity
00:45:49
Speaker
All right. Sand, where are you guys sitting? Yeah. In a building.
00:45:53
Speaker
What do we use to build that building? Dirt. I know you're you're you're probably going for the concrete question. I know where you're going. I can see hungry Yeah. And then you drive on roads.
00:46:11
Speaker
And also use sand. Your phones. They have silica in it. Sand again. Glass made out of sand. We have sand everywhere.
00:46:21
Speaker
And we use it on a daily basis. That's what I was going for. Not the sand in between your toes. But I love that. Ah, okay. Now I get it. Now I know what I'm saying.
00:46:32
Speaker
It just also shows we don't realize how much sand we are actually using and we rely on it on the a daily basis. And that's why I think sand is so important and it goes beyond what we do as coastal engineers.
00:46:48
Speaker
I think we should make sure that we still have sand because we use it as it, or we think of it as an infinite resource, but it's definitely not an infinite resource. And it's apparently the third more used resource after air and water.
00:47:02
Speaker
We use so much sand, but not any type of sand, especially for buildings and stuff. We need sand that has angles so that it can go together and be more cohesive than just a round sand. So desert sand is round because it's formed by aeolian forces, so wind forces.
00:47:22
Speaker
But sea sand with waves and water erosion, it creates angular sand grains. And those are the ones that we use for buildings, for example.
00:47:34
Speaker
I don't know that I appreciated the difference in the, I mean, I knew sediment, you know, as somebody who teaches sediment transport and talks about the effect of shape on fall velocity and things like that. I know that shapes of sand grains can vary, but I don't know that I appreciated the angular versus the more spherical argument in the difference between desert sands and, and coastal sands.
00:47:59
Speaker
Kind of cool. And, and, Seawater, you have obviously salt, so it's not necessarily the best to use. Sometimes like you have places where you can like treat it and remove all the salt because the salt creates erosion if you try to build something. So salt is not the best. so Usually where we try and get the sand from,
00:48:17
Speaker
is like rivers or quarries, but those, if they're taken before they arrive to the beach, it's less sand that arrives to the beach. So it's a sort of erosion, just a different one, not the one that we kind of think of every day, but it is still an erosion.
00:48:35
Speaker
Just like dams, we have, I looked it up, we have built 845,000 dams in the world. And as much as they retain water, they retain so much sediment.
00:48:48
Speaker
all the way to the beach and a road and go in the river because basically where does sand come from? Erosion of mountains. Very, very short answer. So that's how I think it really relates to geology.
00:48:59
Speaker
and coastal engineering at the same time. Before we have like a grain of sand, it takes millions of years. Like it's a geological timescale, which is insane. And I think we don't realize how much time a grain of sand needed to be that size and to arrive there. And I think it's really, really interesting. And it's kind of like this hidden crisis of sand because it's really, it's used a lot Interesting.
00:49:24
Speaker
it's funny. So one of those things that I remember learning about way back in grad school was the practice of sand mining. It's one of those things that came up, I guess, maybe in that literal processes class way back when.
00:49:37
Speaker
And it was kind of discussed, but then, you know, almost, almost forgotten from the standpoint that, you know, we don't have, don't,
00:49:51
Speaker
There are limited, there's less obvious abuses, I guess, of sand mining. not Not that it doesn't happen in some places in the US, but there's um its it happens in a different way, I would say, than like, it's not like people pulling up to a beach and grabbing a dump truck load of sand and like running off to some construction site. Like it's more, guess that's a less typical activity.
00:50:16
Speaker
So it's not something that, you know, I think often about other than, you know, certainly the sediments that could stuck up in, stuck in dams and things like that, or, um, something that you're kind of aware of, but it's, it's interesting.
00:50:32
Speaker
It's interesting to hear you kind of talk about it in like a little bit of a different way and thinking, you know, I guess more sort of upland, up, up, up, up in the watershed. So less, I guess, sand mining directly from the beach, which is the thing that kind of, I guess, the core that kind of struck with me learning about it way back in grad school.
00:50:54
Speaker
And the thing I think about when I think about, when I hear sand mining, that's what I think about. But you're right, there's it's used in everything and that sediment is coming from somewhere. So... So here I'm talking more of the upland process, but if you go, for example, if you look at Singapore, have you ever looked at Singapore on a Google Explorer yeah image? Yes. Okay.
00:51:17
Speaker
crazy. Singapore just expanded over the years. It was an island and then too many people and they're building so much that there were too small, so they just expanded.
00:51:30
Speaker
It's like the only, one of the only countries in the world that just expanded. And um where they took that sand from, they basically stole it because there are very, very little regulations on the sand resource.
00:51:43
Speaker
And so they went to Australia. They went to India, they went to Morocco, where they have sand mafias there, especially in India. And like people die from like trading sand. No, it is crazy.
00:51:56
Speaker
Crazy. Things you learn about. Yeah. So I came across this information when I was in my first year of bachelor. So I was studying earth science and environmental science.
00:52:09
Speaker
And we had one class where our professor just put us in front of a documentary. It's a French one, but it has been translated in English, and it's called Sand Wars. And if anybody follows me on Instagram, I have a link on my bio, and I've had that link forever since, like, I probably had my Instagram account, and it's a link to a TED Talk from that documentary from the same guy. I am a big, big nerd when it comes to sand. And, like, I watched that documentary, and I was like...
00:52:37
Speaker
oh my god, how do we not know this? Like, everybody should be aware of this. We use sin every day, everywhere. And nobody knows about it. We don't know that people are dying because we need to build roads and and buildings and We need the sand.
00:52:51
Speaker
So that's how I became a nerd for a sand. And then this documentary, I don't think it's available unless you purchase it. But there is that TED Talk from Denis Delestruck. And it's a Barcelona TED Talk. And he talks about sand for 15 minutes. And it's a little short version of that documentary.
00:53:09
Speaker
And so I got my info most out of that document. I was done in 2013 and also from... the UNEP in 2019, they had a report about sand that's called Sand and Sustainability, Finding New Solutions for Environmental Governments of Global Sand Resources.
00:53:28
Speaker
And yeah, that's one of like the first ah international kind of report made on sand. And it's really, really interesting. It talks about all of these things. It's interesting because one of, when you asked the question about what we think about sand originally, one of the things I was going to say was a resource,
Responsible Resource Management
00:53:42
Speaker
right? And, ah you know, went in a different direction with my answer, but that was definitely one of the things I was thinking about.
00:53:48
Speaker
And I think what's, what's interesting about this, right? So the, when we had this discussion about, okay, we're going to get together and going do a ah podcast. We're just going to about things that are generally interesting to the three of us.
00:53:59
Speaker
And, when we discussed, when we're thinking about what topics, you know, Deb was like, knew exactly. It was no question, right? The passion about the sediment and the fact that it's on your Instagram profile, since you, since you've had your Instagram, like you knew exactly. Marissa and I were like, Oh, I wonder what we're going to talk about. So it took us like, you know, another day or so to kind of come up with a topic that we thought we were going to talk about. But Deb is definitely a sand nerd. Yeah. I mean that lovingly. I mean that in positive way. know, which is weird.
00:54:33
Speaker
Well, it's what got me here. Yeah. Oh, I have somebody to introduce you to. He really likes sand too.
00:54:42
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. But yeah, no. um So just to finish. So that's how I think we should really, really cherish that. the sand that we have on our beaches. And so next time you go to the beach and you have a little bit of sand on your towel, you have a little bit of sand in between your toes when you go back in your car or whatever, cherish it.
00:55:04
Speaker
Really do because it took this little grain of sand so much time so that you can put your little towel or whatever and enjoy the view and enjoy the beach. So yeah, to cherish it next time.
00:55:17
Speaker
I hope you'll see the beach differently. Yeah. And i think I think also on a positive note, i mean, i'll give I'll give the Corps of Engineers a shout out, right, with their initiatives to i recycle or reuse sediments, right? There's a ah very strong initiative at the Corps and also at state level. I know New Jersey has a big initiative as well with beneficial reuse. And it's that recognition that it is a ah finite resource and we want to responsibly manage it, right? So...
00:55:49
Speaker
These are things that, you know, positive steps, I guess that, you know, at least in the United States, we're taking, you know, at the federal level and the state level, and hopefully at the local level as well you know, reuse sediments in a more ah responsible way, more intelligent way.
00:56:07
Speaker
And you do it right, you can also reduce costs of these projects. Yeah, you can totally recycle aggregates. You can recycle concrete, recycle glass, glass is pure sand, pure silica, which is your most beautiful beaches that squeak and are super, super white.
00:56:22
Speaker
You can definitely recycle all of this. And I think there was a beach in California called the Glass Beach or something like that, because they used to dump glass there and then it got eroded.
00:56:33
Speaker
So long and it was, ah I don't exactly if it was there exactly, but somewhere. Anyway, that sand or that glass sand ended up being eroded so much that it created like super like fine grains of glass sand and they're colored.
00:56:48
Speaker
Some are brown, some are green. So it's a, it has a really nice color to it. um But yeah, you can definitely recycle other things. I think Germany is really big into that. They recycle up to 87% waste aggregates.
00:57:03
Speaker
Our life revolves around sand and I never knew it.
00:57:07
Speaker
a It was very less nerdy, but I feel like that was the most nerdy.
00:57:14
Speaker
I like like the grandos timescale. It's like this one grain of sand took eons to get to where it is.
00:57:25
Speaker
and you're gonna appreciate it. You look at that grain of sand and you appreciate its journey to your beach into your toes. Yeah, I guess it was less scientific and more nerdy, probably. Look at us.
00:57:43
Speaker
Just a bunch of nerds having a conversation from waves to mountains, technically, to the sand. It gets eroded back into the waves. And then the waves put it back. And then the mountains just kind of, it's it's only ah it's a take relationship. you Well, they're they're giving, but we're just taking.
00:58:04
Speaker
Circle of life. Yes, exactly. As always, we'd like to thank our New Jersey Sea Grant for sponsoring the podcast. Thanks, John, for being a part of New Jersey Sea Grant.
00:58:16
Speaker
Do you have any nice words to say about them?
00:58:21
Speaker
New Jersey Sea Grant is awesome. Great. You heard it here, folks. Just like speakers. And in case you weren't aware, the ASPPA Coastal Summit is coming up in Washington, D.C. at the end of March from the 25th to the 27th.
00:58:38
Speaker
I think their registration is still open. um Go check it out on ASPPA.org. Now, if you did enjoy this very riveting episode with your co-hosts, all three of us this time, please share it with your colleagues.
00:58:57
Speaker
Give us a like. Give us a subscribe. Rate us. You know, ring that. Smash that like button and ring that bell. Here we are being podcasters.
00:59:10
Speaker
Just a bunch of nerds with a podcast. Yeah. If you'd like to sponsor an episode, reach out to us at podcastgoingcoastal at gmail.com.
00:59:21
Speaker
Bye. Bye. Bye.