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An aeolian transport model for the selection of dune restoration alternatives

The landfall of hurricane Claudette in 2003 damaged and eroded most Texas
coastal counties. The residents of Pointe San Luis on the west end of Galveston Island,
Texas lost their protective dune front and experienced significant shoreline erosion.
Following the storm, the Pointe San Luis Property Owner's Association contacted Texas
A&M University to design a dune restoration strategy. The greatest natural contributor
to dune reconstruction is the available sand delivered by aeolian transport. During the
course of the study it became apparent that no model or software existed capable of
demonstrating the effectiveness of available dune restoration alternatives. Building
Beach©, a coastal aeolian sand transport simulator, was developed in response to this
need. Based on discrete dynamics and requiring a minimum of technical input, the
software allows coastal property owners, consultants, and coastal developers to
graphically model the effectiveness of several dune restoration options including sand
fence, planted vegetation, geo-textiles, and other solid protective barriers. The graphical
output of Building Beach© enables the user to compare approximations of the
performance of different restoration strategies to select the most effective option for a
particular beach.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4788
Date25 April 2007
CreatorsBell, James Clayton
ContributorsMathewson, Christopher C.
PublisherTexas A&M University
Source SetsTexas A and M University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeBook, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text
Format892073 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital

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