Have you ever wondered about the size of individual grains of sand at your favorite beach? Coastal engineers and scientists have.
Knowing the range of sand grain sizes on a given beach can inform multiple coastal applications from designing robust beaches for flood risk management to beneficially using dredged sediment. However, collecting that information across our nation’s beaches is difficult and labor intensive.
That’s why ERDC launched SandSnap, a project to enlist citizen scientists to help build a sand-grain database that will fill this critical knowledge gap and make our coastlines more resilient to storms.
We discuss SandSnap’s latest advancements and how it enables better beach management. Our guests are Dr. Brian McFall, a senior research coastal engineer at ERDC’s Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL), and Dr. David Young, a research civil engineer at CHL’s Field Research Facility.
Topics include why knowing sand-grain size matters (5:03), how SandSnap has evolved through the years (9:53) and how individuals can contribute to the database by taking a SandSnap (30:54). We also talked about the database’s scope (33:43) and recent advancements like the ability to determine cobble size (20:26) or to use an autonomous robot to collect sand snaps (25:49).
Visit the SandSnap website at https://sandsnap-erdcchl.hub.arcgis.com.
For more information, visit PowerofERDCPodcast.org/69-sandsnap-v2_resources. Listen to the audio version of this podcast at PowerofERDCPodcast.org/69-sandsnap-v2.
