In South Carolina, the physical processes responsible for coastal erosion are
complex, difficult to measure and complicated by the influence of many tidal
inlets. Understanding the relative contributions of processes causing coastal
erosion is important to mitigation of beach erosion. However, isolating individual
processes is difficult to determine from localized studies. Large scale studies
conducted by the USGS in other regions of the U.S. have successfully provided
a large context within which to interpret results of smaller-scale studies and have
isolated processes which operate on larger spatial scales and over longer time
periods.
The region of interest extends from Bull Island to Seabrook Island; a shoreline of
approximately 60 km centered near Charleston, SC characterized by multiple
barrier islands and tidal inlets with a wide range of spatial scales. An extensive
foundation of numerous site-specific databases and published studies already
exist on portions of the reach. Inlet-beach interactions are known to play a
dominant role in short-term changes, and significant historical changes in shoreline
and inlet positions have been documented (Sexton and Hayes, 1983). Stratigraphic
foundations of the modern barrier islands, inlet systems, and shoreface in the
region are believed to strongly influence coastal processes; however, there have
been no comprehensive framework studies to verify this hypothesis.
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Center for Coastal Geology http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/scerosion/index.html
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Updated March 24, 2004 @ 04:14 PM
(JSS)