Within South Carolina, the beaches of the Grand Strand represent critical natural resources that attract scores of new residents every year and contribute substantially to South Carolina’s $14 billion a year tourism industry (SC Travel and Tourism Council, 2001). Because constant erosion of this shoreline places billions of dollars worth of infrastructure at risk, the US Army Corps of Engineers established a 50-year management plan that includes nourishing these beaches on approximately 10-year intervals (USACE 2006). Little is known about the biocomplexity of these critical hard bottom habitats nearer to shore, including the spatial and temporal variability and interactions between the geological, physical, and biological processes. Further, the consequences of continued beach nourishment for the complex interactions between the physical and geological processes and biological communities remain poorly understood.
The principal investigator and her colleagues propose to (1) quantify the magnitude, frequency, and direction of sediment transport on and around the nearshore hard-bottom habitats of the Grand Strand, (2) determine if the hard bottom habitats on the shoreface and inner-shelf are significantly impacted from the re-nourishment project on the shorter times scales of days to months due to increased sediment supply and net offshore transport, and (3) determine what effect this may have on longer-term changes in community structure and shorter-term recruitment dynamics.