>>Dr. Doug Elmore: Let's take a virtual field trip to several barrier islands. Here's a
picture of a beach in Louisiana. It's composed of sand, there's symmetrical ripples, and
there's seaward-dipping planar laminae, which I'll talk about more in the next slide. It's
of course it's covered daily, twice daily, with saltwater. And it's inhabited by burrowers,
crabs, worms, and birds, and a group of students right here digging a trench on the beach.
Here's that trench they dug, and what you can see here is there's some faint laminae,
you can see some lighter and darker sediment. And these are seaward-dipping laminae, dipping
toward us, toward you, which is where the ocean is. And you also see some shell layers,
which are probably a storm deposit at the base of the trench. You also find burrows
on the beach, and here are a couple examples of burrows. The salt marsh -- the back part
of the barrier island. Here's a picture of a little hole we dug in lagoonal mud. It was
very dark, organic rich, and it smelled like rotten eggs. You also find a lot of fecal
pellets from crabs and other organisms on the marsh area. And all these little round
things there are fecal pellets. Here's an army of crabs in the marsh. And here's some
ripple marks with fecal pellets in the troughs of the ripples. I just happen to like that
photograph. Here's some pictures of Louisiana. There's New Orleans, we're going to be down
here to the southwest of New Orleans. And what we've got in the lower picture are these
islands. The red shows what they were like in 1887, and the green shows what they were
like in 1988. Notice the difference. Well one, they've moved landward, and two, there's
been significant land loss. This is a picture from Trinity Island on the Mississippi Delta,
there are two pictures here. You see so the upper one has some students standing on the
beach. And you'll notice it's not a very nice beach, there's a lot of mud there. And if
you look closely at the picture on the right, you'll see there are a lot of plants. That
is actually marsh material—material that formed in the marsh and it's now on the beach.
Why? Because the barrier island has moved over its own marsh, it's migrating landward,
leaving the marsh material behind so it's eroded up on the beach. So at one point in
time in that upper photograph, the barrier island was out where the waves are breaking
right now. But the whole island has moved landward. And this is a picture of an overwash
fan on Trinity Island. The island is in the background there, and that lobe of sand there
came from the beach and was deposited on the back part of the barrier island, an overwash
fan. And then there's a student for scale.
If there's one point you need to remember about barrier islands, it's that the sand
is moving in a number of different ways. It's moving along the shoreline, and it's moving
perpendicular to the shoreline. And this picture here illustrates that. This is the end of
the seawall on Galveston Island. There's a large seawall that protects the city of Galveston
in Texas. They need that seawall otherwise the city would be in serious shape. Well,
eventually that seawall stops, and you're looking at the place where the seawall has
stopped. Notice what's happened to the island where there is no seawall. It has moved landward
compared to the part of the island that's protected by the seawall. You can also notice
out in the water that the waves are breaking in several different places: right along the
shoreline, and then two other areas just offshore. Those are those offshore bars that migrate
landward during the summer and add sand to the beach. So what do we do about this problem?
If sea level is rising, and barrier islands are moving landward, what do we try to do
about that? Well, one thing we do, as illustrated here, is to build a seawall. We also build
breakwaters, groins, and use a process called beach replenishment. This is another view
of the Galveston Island seawall. You'll notice that they've put a lot of what's called riprap
out in front of the seawall to protect the seawall. These large rocks reduce the wave
energy and help protect the seawall. But there's a problem with seawalls. Seawalls concentrate
wave energy, which undermines the wall and results that you need to build a bigger seawall.
And eventually they may have to—they will have to do this on Galveston Island. Also
notice that when you produce a seawall, you don't have much of a beach left. Do you want
to go swimming off that particular seawall right there? Probably not. There are other
places along Galveston Island where you can swim with a seawall, but in those areas they
add sand to the beach every year, usually out in front of the hotels. This is another
picture from Galveston Island. It's down the coast. There's no seawall there. But to protect
houses in this subdivision, they've used what are called geotubes, which are these large,
black bags. They're filled with sediment, and they're kind of a cheap seawall that might
help protect the houses for a short amount of time. One of the interesting things about
this picture, it was taken in 2003, is that they're building a very nice house right next
to the beach. I don't think that's a very good idea [laughs] because the next big storm's
going to take that house out. This is a breakwater from down in Louisiana. It's that pile of
rocks out there. It tends to reduce the wave energy and can help protect the beach in terms
of help reduce energy, the wave energy, and reduce erosion. That's on Grand Isle in Louisiana.
We also build groins on beaches. Now groins are generally wood structures, sometimes concrete
structures, built perpendicular to the shoreline. And they're meant to trap the longshore drift.
But there's a problem with building groins. Let's say you have a house, they build a groin,
they trap sand in front of their house. But what happens down current? If there were a
house just below that one house here, that person's got less beach. So what do they have
to do? They have to build a groin too. You notice up, in the upper part of the photograph
many people have built groins because they don't have much of a choice. If they don't
have a groin, they won't have much beach. Another way we address beach erosion is beach
replenishment. And this is a case where we dredge sand, generally offshore, and pump
it to the barrier island, the upstream part of the barrier island, so the longshore drift
will carry it down the barrier island. The problem is this is very expensive, and studies
have shown that most of the sand is gone within two, and certainly four years. So it's a very
temporary solution. It's not a long-term solution.
So here are some pictures of what can happen to houses on a barrier island. These are from
Galveston Island, and were taken after Hurricane Ike hit the shoreline. You'll notice there
are two houses here. The one in the lower photograph is pretty much destroyed. The ones
in the upper picture, the surf zone is right under the houses. And those will eventually
fall into the ocean. Here are some pictures of what happened when Ike came ashore in Galveston
Island. On the right you see the path of the storm, and on the left you see two photographs.
The upper one shows before the storm and there are two arrows indicating two houses. And
then the lower one shows what happened after the storm. Those two houses are still there,
shown by the arrows, but most of the houses in front of them are gone. This is also from
Ike, it's a little north of the last couple of pictures I showed you. And what's kind
of strange about this picture is there used to be houses all along that road. Most of
them are gone, but there's one house still standing. It was a very well built structure
and so it withstood the storm. However, there was a lot of water damage in the house, but
the structure still stood. But most of the houses, as you can see, are gone. That area
was devastated by the storm. And some more slides here from the Galveston area. The ones
on the left show before and after. Showing how houses were destroyed along the shoreline.
And the one on the right shows this structure, this jetty (it was I think a restaurant) that
was built offshore before the storm, and then it's gone after the storm, destroyed by this
strong wave energy. Orrin Pilkey, who's a geologist at Duke University and is well known
for his work on barrier islands in North Carolina and around the world, one of his quotes here
states this: "Nature tries to shift the outer banks, [referring to the outer banks of North
Carolina] but man keeps shoveling it back." This may be one of the best solutions. If
you have a house that's very close to the beach, what should you do about it? It's probably
going to be destroyed if another big storm moves in. But one thing you can do, is you
can move that house to the back part of the barrier island, and you may have it for a
little longer time than you would if you just left it near the beach.