Allow enough time between nourishment projects for the slowest reproducing beach organism to recolonize and reproduce.įor more information on these recommendations, refer to Speybroeck et al. 2006 in the References section.NewJersey Subreddit Rules (Moderator discretion applies)Īdhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life.Keep the project footprint as small as possible. Perform several small nourishment projects rather than a single large project to allow some beach animals to survive.Execute the nourishment at a time of year when birds and other mobile organisms are less prevalent.Plough the sand immediately after nourishment to prevent it from becoming so compact that it is inhospitable to beach critters.Place sand up coast and in the nearshore zone and allow waves to move it onto and along the beach.Use sand with a similar composition to the natural sand.If nourishment must be performed, it should be done in the least environmentally impactful way possible. This practice of managed retreat, while challenging, is preferable to both nourishment and armoring because it preserves the natural beach. There also is a third option. If humans create or maintain open space inland from the beach, the beach can slowly migrate inland rather than eroding away entirely.
The grain size of the introduced sand can influence how fast it erodes, leading to changes in beach shape.The eroding sand can also cover kelp forests, rocky intertidal reefs and seagrass beds, and it can end up clogging the mouths of estuaries, altering vital tidal exchange. Critters that rely on relatively clean, clear water, like clams, can die off in large numbers. As the ocean starts eroding the introduced sand, the water offshore can become muddy, potentially smothering marine life and changing coastal water quality.These animals may require human help to return to a beach impacted by nourishment. Beach animals that carry their young in pouches (rather than producing free-floating young), such as amphipods and isopods, depend entirely on resident populations for recovery.Long-lived species that do not reproduce often, such as Pismo clams, may take decades to recover.Some types of animals, such as sand crabs, start their lives as free-floating larvae that drift through the ocean with the currents, so they can float in from elsewhere and recolonize the beach in a year. However, if the nourishment episode coincides with this event, then the population will not have a chance to begin repopulating the beach until the following year.The time needed for a beach ecosystem to recover from a single beach filling episode is not known, even when fill sand is the right size and type. Repeated or frequent episodes of nourishment can impede recovery of the beach community and ecosystem.The resulting catastrophic loss of intertidal prey resources for wildlife such as shorebirds means these birds have to travel to another beach to find food.
The new sand may not be the same grain size or chemical makeup of the natural sand, changing the habitat that beach animals rely upon.The heavy machinery used to truck in and distribute new sand also kills beach animals and disturbs wildlife. During nourishment, the beach becomes a major construction zone.The sudden input of massive amounts of sand can kill all the animals living on the beach.What Are the Consequences of Beach Nourishment? With sea level rise and storms threatening to erode sandy beaches, it is likely that nourishment will become more prevalent as managers seek to protect valuable coastal property. Often referred to as a “soft armoring” technique, it is sometimes viewed as a superior alternative to hard armoring because it avoids some of the major pitfalls associated with hard structures like seawalls. Beach nourishment, or beach filling, is the practice of adding large quantities of sand or sediment to beaches to combat erosion and increase beach width.