This project, funded by the US Coastal Research Program, will improve our understanding of extreme events through the continuous measurement of atmospheric and hydrographic parameters on the shoreline during a landfalling hurricane. Our collaborators at the University of Florida are developing sophisticated hurricane monitoring towers called Sentinels. This research team is adding water quality sensors and an acoustic Doppler current profiler (with directional wave capabilities) to the Sentinel tower. The Sentinel tower will be deployed on the shoreline prior to a landfalling hurricane. The addition of the ADCP and water quality sensors will allow us to characterize chemical and biological fluxes on the shoreline during an extreme event. The Sentinel tower provides a robust, integrated platform for measuring the arrival and progression of tropical cyclone winds, associated storm surge and waves, and erosion. Adding the ADCP and water quality sensors will enable the discovery of new, fundamental knowledge related to hurricane wind-wave interactions, surge-wave-current dynamics, and dependencies between storm surge and water quality parameters. To learn more about the Sentinel project, feel free to check out this article and this short news segment.

The Alabama Comprehensive Living Shoreline Monitoring Program is a collaboration with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Funded by the RESTORE Council, this comprehensive monitoring effort will develop and test a standard set of monitoring parameters and protocols, based on a five-year living shoreline monitoring program together with analysis of existing monitoring data from the target project sites. Once completed, the monitoring program will allow for robust comparisons across all monitored projects, as well as an accurate evaluation of their success relative to specific site conditions, providing valuable information to resource managers, project proponents, homeowners, and others interested in utilizing and promoting living shorelines techniques. 

The University of South Alabama is collaborating on two separate research projects funded through the NOAA Effects of Sea Level Rise (FY21) program. The lead PI's on each project are Dr. Ben Bowers (Auburn University) and Dr. Jo Sias (University of New Hampshire).  Generally, the broad research goal is to improve the resilience of surface transportation infrastructure to the effects of sea level rise. Though each research team is taking a unique approach to tackling the research goal, both projects are investigating the ability of natural and nature-based features (NNBF) to improve coastal highway resilience to sea level rise. These projects will ultimately produce actionable information that will aid in the planning, design, and maintenance of highways in the coastal environment.

Through a collaboration with the University of the Virgin Islands on their NSF-funded Ridge to Reef project, we are exploring the impact of invasive tropical seagrasses on beach dynamics, shoreline change, and coastal resilience to extreme events. We are instrumenting seagrass beds throughout the US Virgin Islands to measure waves, currents, and sediment deposition/erosion across a gradient of wave exposures and wave conditions (seasonality). 

Our research group has a number of active research projects and interests within Little Lagoon, which is a small estuary located in Gulf Shores,  Alabama. Our primary research project in this system is funded by the Alabama Department of Transportation. The objective of that project is to monitor the volume of sand in the flood tidal shoal on a regular basis (at least once every two years).  We occasionally perform beach profile surveys along the beaches adjacent to Lagoon Pass, surveys of the pass itself, and surveys of the ebb tidal shoal volumes. The overarching purpose of this project is to assist the agency in managing sediment within the pass system. Our research goal is to improve our understanding of tidal inlet and beach dynamics in micro-tidal systems dominated by strong wave-driven sand transport.

This project, funded by the US Coastal Research Program, is focused on developing Systems Engineering Approaches for Resilience to Coastal Hazards (SEARCH). We are focused on developing resilient adaptations for barrier island communities using a systems approach to managing risk to extreme events and sea level rise. Our study area is Dauphin Island, Alabama, which serves as an excellent natural laboratory and testbed for developing and testing resilient adaptations and adaptation pathways.

Funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, this Center of Excellence for risk-based community resilience planning is a multi-institution collaborative project led by Colorado State University. The CoE is responsible for developing research and tools for modeling community resilience--including damage, displacement, recovery, etc.--and evaluating risk to natural hazards. The culminating toolkit of this research exists within the Interdependent Networked Community Resilience Modeling Environment (IN-CORE). More information about the open source IN-CORE tools is available here.