Coastal Dune Morphodynamics: Insights Across Time and Space Scales

Wind-blown (aeolian) sediment transport is an important modifier of landscape change in coastal environments. Gradients in the transport field contributes to the building of coastal foredunes, which are topographically high features that are increasingly relied on to protect low-lying infrastructure from storm-induced flooding hazards along sandy coastlines. While skill in predicting wave-induced dune erosion during storms is generally improving, there are currently limited reliable quantitative tools for predicting the recovery and subsequent growth of dunes by aeolian processes in coastal systems. As part of improving fundamental understanding of the mechanisms and time/space scales of coastal foredune growth, in this talk a number of field data collection efforts utilizing new remote sensing techniques using high resolution lidars will be presented that provide novel insights on (1) micro-scale windblown transport processes and (2) meso-scale morphodynamic feedbacks on dunes