Sustainable Sand Stewardship at The Water Institute
The Challenge
Sand and other types of sediment are the building blocks of land, forming the underlying foundation of all communities and ecosystems. Storms, sea level rise, and other processes remove sediment and convert land to water, threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people as well as unique coastal habitats that support a wide variety of plant and animal life.
Coastal restoration is used worldwide to address these threats. For example, as of 2023, more than 1.5 billion cubic yards of sand have been placed on the beaches of the United States to protect coastal communities and the estimated $285 billion they contribute to the nation’s economy. Communities are increasingly competing for sand to protect their coasts as readily accessible sources on land and the seafloor are depleted.
Effective sand management matters inland, as well, where rivers and reservoirs must be dredged for navigation to keep the nation’s waterborne commerce flowing. On the Mississippi River, for example, federal and local agencies remove millions of cubic yards of sediment every year to support more than $400 billion in waterborne commerce.
So why not take sand from where there is too much and put it where there is too little? Although “beneficial use” is a critical part of the solution, transporting sand over long distances is expensive. In addition, not all sediment is the same: restored beaches may erode more quickly if the grain size is too small, while some dredged material may contain harmful contaminants. Locating and managing sand equitably in the face of sea level rise and other climate change effects is an increasingly complex, global problem with far-reaching impacts on the economy, environment, and communities.
To meet this challenge, The Water Institute has initiated the Sustainable Sand Stewardship at The Water Institute, bringing together a transdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and planners to work with stakeholders on innovative, science-based approaches to holistic sand and sediment management.
The Approach
The Sustainable Sand Stewardship at The Water Institute works with partners across a wide spectrum of sand and sediment issues, including:
Locating and Characterizing Sediment
Knowing where sediment resources are located, and the amount and quality located in each area, supports coastal planners in the engineering and design of restoration projects. The Institute works with partners to advance the science and utility of offshore sediment resource evaluations nationwide.
Understanding Sediment Movement and Landscape Change
One challenging aspect of managing sand as a resource is that it is dynamic. Beach, marsh, and riverine environments can change dramatically – sometimes in hours – due to winds, waves, currents, and other processes. Effectively managing landscapes and the sediment that comprise them requires predictive models built on solid, scientific understanding of the underlying processes.
Managing Sand and Sediment in Coastal and Riverine Systems
Effective sand and landscape management also requires innovative tools for incorporating scientific information into practical application. The Sustainable Sand Stewardship at The Water Institute is building on the Water Institute’s role as a boundary organization between academic and management communities to pioneer new approaches in this arena. Recognizing the value local and traditional knowledge brings to the table, these efforts have also included incorporating community observations into numerical models and management frameworks.
Valuing and Equitably Managing Sediment as a Resource
Fair and equitable management of sediment requires more than being able to predict how landscapes will respond to potential alternatives. Methods are needed for quantifying the value that sediment provides to communities and ecosystems to make choices for how this limited resource is used.
The Opportunity
If you are interested in partnering with the Sustainable Sand Stewardship at The Water Institute, please reach out to the points of contact on this page.
Related Projects
Locating and Characterizing Sediment
- Supporting development of a National Offshore Sand Inventory, which the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is developing to sustainably manage sediment resources and prepare the nation for growing future sediment needs.
- Investigation of sediment infilling channel bars in the lower Mississippi River investigating how quickly sand mining locations for restoration within the river fill up for future use.
- Transport thresholds for fine sediment in vegetation to improve marsh ability to capture sand from Mississippi River inflows.
- Determining sediment infilling rate of lower Mississippi River borrow pits to help inform decisions on using renewable river sand and sediment for coastal restoration.
Understanding Sediment Movement and Landscape Change
- Development and application of models for understanding regional sediment dynamics of barrier island systems
- Partnering with national organizations like the U.S. Geological survey to improve the utility of real time forecasts predicting storm impacts
- Investigating sediment movement and retention in marshes
- Development of a living laboratory where scientists, engineers, and managers from across organizations can investigate how riverine sediment interacts with marshes and wetlands
- Combining field observations and numerical modeling to determine the underlying processes driving infilling of borrow areas
- Tracing how sediment was deposited in communities during a flood event to improvement future management
Managing Sand and Sediment in Coastal and Riverine Systems
- Supporting the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) in developing the Barrier Island System Management (BISM) program, a regional sediment management approach to holistically manage the state’s entire barrier island and headland system.
- Advancing methods for determining the cumulative effects of restoration projects on coastlines
- Researching indicators for effectively evaluating the resilience and resistance of islands to inform the need for restoration
- Developing and applying models for evaluating how barrier islands would respond to specific sand placement alternatives designed to increase habitat for sea turtles, shorebirds, and other species
- Partnering with more than a dozen vessel operation companies to collect crowd-sourced depth sounding data, which is used by an Institute-developed machine learning method to develop the most up-to-date bathymetric map of the Mississippi River currently available.
- Working with CPRA to identify and evaluate alternate sand and water management strategies providing broad benefit across navigation, flood protection, and ecosystem restoration
- Investigating how sediment and water diverted from the Mississippi River will interact with shallow estuarine basins
- Developing integrated frameworks that incorporate feedbacks between sediment dynamics, landscape change, vegetation, and nutrients, allowing for comprehensive evaluations of river systems and their impacts on estuarine systems
- Investigating wetland and estuary response to restoration alternatives
- Evaluating alternate beneficial use scenarios for sediment dredged as part of navigation improvements
Valuing and Equitably Managing Sediment as a Resource
- Partnering with entities such as the U.S. Army Corps (USACE) Engineering With Nature® Initiative to improve quantification of the economic, environmental, and social benefits of Natural and Nature-Based Features like marshes, beaches, and dunes that require sediment for construction
- Improving consideration of equity and environmental justice as part of ongoing work also focused on accelerating implementation of NNBF and investigating how use of sediment for these projects can potentially enhance carbon sequestration
- Advancing methods for comprehensively capturing the value of regional sediment management and beneficial use of dredged material to enable more efficient and effective use of this limited resource
KEY TEAM MEMBERS
