Identifying Overwash Layers in Marsh Sediment

Hurricanes have become one of the most researched topics in recent years, due to their damage costs and their uncertain correlations with climate change. Much of the research for this topic has come from direct interaction with storms, such as damage reports and land surveys. However, there is a gap in the historical record of hurricanes, as most historical record is only written. These records can be biased and are too short of a record to identify a pattern of climate change. Grain size analysis, where sizes of sediment grains are measured, can be used to identify the storm events by identifying points of larger sediment diameters as points of events that caused storm sediments to be pushed from the beach to the marsh environment, known as overwash. Through this method and use of radiocarbon dating, a record of storms can be created on a geologic timescale and can expand our knowledge of the historical pattern of hurricanes. Using a sediment core taken from St. Vincent Island, FL, a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico, a geologic record of the area was created from the data The results of which shows that since the environment transitioned from a beach sand environment, there have been three distinct overwash events at approximately 300 CE, 1000 CE, and 2010 CE. None of these events show any sign of being abnormal for the region or show an increase in intensity or frequency