SPCMSC scientists travel to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to conduct DUNEX research

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

Funded through the Coastal Sediment Availability and Flux (CSAF) project, this research is part of DUNEX (During Nearshore Event Experiment), led by the U.S. Coastal Research Program (USCRP). This field experiment involves multiple organizations (federal and state agencies, coastal managers, and academic institutions) and is designed to understand how oceanographic processes alter coastal geomorphology during storms. The original experiment was planned for the fall of 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic and has now been rescheduled for summer/fall of 2021. The idea behind DUNEX is to gather researchers from across the coastal community to make simultaneous and complementary observations that often have never been combined before. This small part of the larger DUNEX effort will investigate how morphology and geology of the shoreface co-evolve, or what it looks like before the storm, immediately after, and then how it changes over a recovery period. This survey will provide the pre-storm information that will be the basis of comparison to all subsequent surveys. To do this, Research Geologist Jennifer Miselis and Electronics Technician Andy Farmer will deploy USGS geophysical instrumentation from a USACE amphibious vessel so data can be collected as close to shore as possible. Combined with data collected by other DUNEX collaborators, the data will help Miselis understand the timing and magnitude of the geomorphologic changes affected by storms and the driving processes at a resolution and scale that is rarely achieved.

Read what else is new at the St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center.