A big thank you to Brian Saye and the beach survey team for their ongoing efforts in accurately mapping changes in the beach.
A quick read of our earlier survey-stories, Beach Surveys and Steady as she goes, should help if you need a refresher on the whys and wherefores of our survey program.
We are now well into the second year of this project and have the results of six surveys taken each quarter from January 2012 through to June 2013. A recent addition to the survey has been the capture of the locations of each of the 80 sand-traps now in place so that their effects can be directly measured.
Two headlines are apparent from the survey data.
Firstly, the foot of the main dune in front of the village has built up substantially from June 2012 to June 2013 across all 26 survey cross sections (S12 to S38)covering that area. Here’s a view across the whole village in which you can use the magnifier to zoom in on particular sections. You can see the difference if you compare the pink line of June 2013 to the blue line of June 2012. Here’s the section in front of the bowling club to illustrate the build up. There may be multiple factors causing this build up but the correlation with DuneCare’s sand-traps is striking. Interesting to see that while the foot of the dune is building, closer to the water the beach has become steeper and lower over the year.
Secondly, the surveys confirm that there is substantial variation in the pattern of change across the 7km length of the beach as highlighted in the recent Automated Cameras Report. In contrast to the change described in front of the village, the sections towards the river walls show little change (eg S6) while the sections north to Wilsons show both erosion (eg S50 near Wilsons) and accretion (eg S42 a little north of the village).
Finally, an exciting new prospect we’re looking into is the possibility of using the survey data to start measuring changes in the total weight of sand on the beach. This will help determine whether the beach is systemically shrinking, growing or just oscillating a constant amount of sand along its length and breadth.
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