Monday, January 30, 2017

Shoreline morphology monitoring

Tera Dummitt, student at the Huxley College on the Peninsulas program, walking a beach transect line on Dungeness Spit
Whoa, three months since my last post...far too long.  Things have been too busy.  But in the depths of winter I'm remembering summer, and just wrapped up two reports documenting this year's efforts to measure shoreline morphology at beaches on the Olympic coast and on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This is a tiny program, and one that I keep afloat largely by determination and donation, but I continue to believe that these types of data will provide us important perspectives in the future.

Ruby Beach with students from the University of Washington MeSSAGE program
Another special part of the program for me is the opportunity it provides to work with students.  This year in particular I had great support from the Huxley College Program on the Peninsulas, as well as the University of Washington MeSSAGE Program.

Along the way I also put together summaries on patterns or trends I find interesting.  A few recent examples are here and here.