Six decades of beach surveys reveal extent of shoreline erosion
By Frank Carini / ecoRI News columnist
Southern New England’s beaches are under attack from misdirected human behavior. While they may be eroding and retreating, they will survive. The same can’t be said for the human-made infrastructure sitting on and behind these popular stretches of sand.
The region’s coastline is a transitory environment in which change is both natural and unforgiving. But a century-plus of sustained coastal development, buoyed by shortsighted federal flood insurance, has significantly changed the dynamic.
With nowhere to retreat because of oceanfront cottages,
private bathhouses, massive vacation homes, assorted businesses, roads, parking
lots, and various shoreline amenities, these coastal areas of loose sand,
pebble, and shell particles will eventually just take what we think is ours.
“A beach is a transition zone between land and sea. There’s
always going to be a beach, where the geology allows,” J.P. Walsh, a University
of Rhode Island professor of oceanography, marine geology, and geophysics,
said. “It’s just what is it going to look like? Is it going to be a nice sandy
beach? Unless you’re eroding into bedrock, you will form a beach from what
you’re eroding into.”
In that case, most of Rhode Island’s coastal beaches, in the
not-too-distant future, will be comprised of worn-down pieces of aluminum
siding, cedar panels, roofing shingles, steel beams, cement, asphalt, and tons
more plastic.
A rapidly increasing number of human beings, our relentless
burning of fossil fuels, and our unabated consumption of natural resources is
taking a toll on the natural world. It’s upending the climate by changing
natural systems, such as slowing down the Gulf Stream and melting mountain
glaciers and ice sheets. Sea level is rising.
While the climate crisis shouldn’t be blamed for all of this
coastal change, it has accelerated natural processes. Beach nourishment is for us. Mother Nature has her own way
of dealing with a changing shoreline. Humans just get in the way.
An ongoing University of Rhode Island project has been
documenting changes along the Ocean State’s coastal landscape for six decades.
“It provides a wonderfully long data set at a number of sites. It really provides some understanding of the changes that these different beaches have experienced over a long period of time,” Walsh said. “I think it offers perspective. You often hear Rhode Islanders talk about, ‘Oh, I remember when there was a volleyball court in front of Ocean Mist.’ This kind of gives measurements to some of those memories.”
The sea took the volleyball court at the popular drinkery on
Matunuck Beach Road in South Kingstown decades ago.
Walsh said the public needs to be aware of the changes
happening along Rhode Island’s coastal landscape. Data provide the best way to
do that.
Since 1962, some four dozen students and several
scientists from URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, the URI
Environmental Data Center, the school’s Department of Geosciences,
and Eastern Connecticut State University have monitored the
shorelines of eight Rhode Island beaches, collecting measurements and images
that reveal short- and long-term changes and the impact of severe storms.
URI recently made one of the world’s oldest and continuous
beach survey efforts available via Rhode
Island Beach Dynamics Over Decades. The website took a year and a half to
develop. The online project was funded through a grant from the state’s Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council.
The creation of the website was spearheaded by Walsh and
Mary Klimasewiski, a marine research associate in the Graduate School of
Oceanography (GSO).
“The website and the the tools within the website allow
historical data to be viewed by the public and researchers and managers,” said
Klimasewiski, who earned a master’s degree in data science from URI in 2025.
“Building on this historical data, the public can view in near real time
changes as we move into the future and as these changes persist. It allows
people to better understand the trends.”
The beach-surveying duo recently spoke to me about what the
ongoing project’s 64 years of data tell us about Rhode Island’s changing
coastline.
Walsh, who as served as the supervisor of the GSO Beach
Survey since 2020, noted the beaches behave differently.
“Many beaches experience erosion and they can kind of bounce
back, whether it’s through management or natural processes,” he said. “A couple
beaches, Green Hill and Moonstone, have both seen really substantial loss since
1963, about 140 feet of erosion at those two sites. We tend to think of erosion
as being one direction because it is, but usually it’s followed by some natural
response. Sand might go offshore and then come back onto the beach, or be moved
along the beach and be redeposited at a another location. All the sites showed
some pretty significant erosion during Sandy, but not all of them are showing
net change over the long term” — at least not yet.
A webpage on the new site is devoted to the impact of severe
weather, including hurricanes and winter storms. Using photos and graphics, the
website explains how high-water levels can erode dunes and cause flooding.
One example used to illustrate this is 2012’s Superstorm
Sandy. Though Sandy wasn’t a direct hit on Rhode Island, it caused high water
levels and large waves that caused significant beach and dune changes.
The GSO Beach Survey has been keeping a close eye on eight
southern shoreline beaches that stretch about 17 miles from Misquamicut State
Beach in Westerly to South Kingstown Town Beach.
Misquamicut (Westerly): Sandy left a discernible mark on
this state beach, eroding dunes as a result of storm surge and wave run-up. In
the months that followed, sand accretion helped restore much of the lost beach,
allowing Misquamicut to return close to its pre-storm shoreline position. The
beach’s dunes, however, haven’t returned to their previous elevations.
Weekapaug (Westerly): This beach has been surveyed since
the project began. During that time, there have been moderate changes to the
Weekapaug beach system relative to other locations that are being monitored.
The Great Hurricane of 1938 did cause considerable death and destruction along
this stretch of Westerly ocean front. The Weekapaug Inn was destroyed and 41
people were killed.
East Beach 1 (Charlestown): This barrier beach separates
Ninigret Pond from the Atlantic Ocean and forms the southern edge of the
Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge. It is one of the least developed and visited
beaches in Rhode Island. It’s the only beach that has exhibited some net
accretion since the early 1960s.
East Beach 2 (Charlestown): The upper portion of this spit
of barrier beach has eroded some 60 feet since surveying began there in 1976.
Charlestown: This beach has been monitored since 1975. The
beach has changed in overall shape over time but little net loss of beach area
has occurred. It experienced significant elevation loss in its upper portions
following Sandy, taking nearly a decade to fully rebound. Since 2022, there has
been some further elevation loss across the whole beach, though conditions have
remained mostly consistent.
Green Hill (South Kingstown): This beach has been surveyed
since 1962. It was developed as a summer cottage community, with beachfront
homes built in the early 20th century. Many of these cottages were destroyed by
the Great Hurricane of 1938. Today, the beach remains largely a private,
community-access shoreline managed through local associations such as the Green
Hill Civic Association, and it continues to be reshaped by wave action. The
beach has been steadily eroding since the 1960s, with significant losses in
cross-shore distance and changes in elevation.
Moonstone (South Kingstown): This beach is within the
Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge. It is one of the most eroding sites over
the past 60-plus years. The beach face has moved some 100 feet landward since
surveying began in 1963. Dunes have also dramatically eroded in that time.
South Kingstown: Town Beach is in the community of
Matunuck. This stretch of coast, which includes Roy Carpenter’s Beach, has a
long history of high erosion. The area was heavily impacted by Sandy. Since
2016 about 30 feet of erosion has occurred along the upper beach.
“It’s not as cut and dry as as you might expect, hope, or
want it to be. These are dynamic systems with a lot of processes that are
interacting with the beach — the back barrier, and the slope of the beach, the
face of the beach — and they all contribute to the rate at which we’re seeing
changes at these beaches,” Klimasewiski said. “Any sort of infrastructure and
structures behind the beach area further impacts what we are seeing.”
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| Jake Harrington uses the real-time kinematic global positioning system at a Charlestown, R.I., beach to take a survey. (J.P. Walsh) |
Beach profiles — typically done every two weeks in the winter and monthly in the summer — have been created for each of these eight beaches. Such a profile is created when researchers measure a series of elevation points across a beach, from the waterline to the landward vegetation. These surveyed points are plotted on a graph to show the shape of a beach at a specific point in time. By repeating these measurements over time, changes can be documented and calculated.
Historically, beaches were surveyed using a tripod-mounted
survey level and stadia rod. One person would look through the survey level at
the person holding the stadia rod to determine the height above the ground and
the distance to the rod. This technique is time consuming and requires
careful team coordination.
About three years ago, a real-time kinematic global
positioning system replaced the tripod-mounted survey level and stadia rod as
the standard practice for beach surveying. This faster, easier system links to
a network of base stations to capture accurate location and elevation
measurements at a survey point. An antenna collects time signals from a
constellation of satellites, while the controller connects in real-time to an
online network for corrections.
About 1,000 beach surveys have been conducted. Shoreline
studies like the GSO Beach Survey are a critical part of coastal zone
management efforts.
On warm summer days, the Ocean State’s beaches are typically
packed with swimmers and sunbathers, but most beachgoers give little thought
about how the shoreline evolves over time.
“Everyone likes to go to the beach on a nice summer day, but
people rarely visit during storms and other seasons,” Walsh said when URI
unveiled the new website. “The profiles demonstrate how the beach is alive,
growing, shrinking, and changing as seawater and sedimentation reshape
it. Like snowflakes, beaches never look the same again, and it’s
important for communities to appreciate and plan for these transformations.”
Rhode Island’s worst storms — the Great Hurricane of 1938 and Hurricane Carol in 1954 — predate the onset of beach
surveying. While Hurricane Bob (1991) and Sandy 21 years later brought strong
winds and waves and caused widespread beach erosion, unnamed winter storms in
December 2022, December 2023, and January 2024 also caused substantial impacts
along the Rhode Island coastline.
The buildup of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere
has taken a bite out of the Ocean State’s coast from Providence to Point Judith
and around Block Island, John King, a longtime GSO professor, told ecoRI News in 2021. He noted erosion rates are
increasing and the volume of sand is decreasing. Beaches and the sand upon them
protect the land and all the human stuff staged behind them. He said Rhode
Island is losing a natural defender of its developed coastline, and upland sand
resources won’t last forever, even if taxpayer funding could.
Since the vast majority of the state’s beaches are being
squeezed by human-built infrastructure, shoreline is being loss, coastal
wetlands are being inundated, coastal lagoons are being filled in, dunes are
being flattened, and storm surge is pounding cottages, homes, bars, and roads.
Flooding is becoming more frequent and intense.
Walsh is concerned about the continued hardening of Rhode
Island’s coastline, whether with new homes or seawalls. For one, it “really
impacts the resource that people enjoy.” Plus, he noted, the probability of a
bigger storm, like what hit hard in 1938 and 1954, looms and impact will be
immense.
“I think we should avoid being complacent about what could
happen. I worry about the investment that I see in new home construction,” he
said. “Usually it’s on parcels that have been developed before and people are
building bigger houses, but that front line is especially vulnerable.
“Once you put hardening in, it tends to drive offshore erosion in front of the hardening because there’s reflection of energy, and so you lose the beach. You end up with something that is maybe flooded during high tide, or you can’t even pass it at low tide. Holding the line is going to be difficult with sea level rise and with the storms that are going to be coming in the future. That’s a tough reality to face.”
Frank Carini can be reached at frank@ecori.org. His opinions
don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.
