South Kingstown Town Beach

South Kingstown Town Beach is located in the community of Matunuck along the southern shoreline of South Kingstown, RI (see map). This stretch of coast, which includes Roy Carpenter's Beach, has a long history of high erosion.  For example, the area was heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy as can be seen in this online video from WPRI.  Beach surveying has been ongoing here for decades, but only the last decade of data is currently available for visualization.  Since 2016 about 30 feet of erosion has occurred along the upper beach (see graphs below and photo at right).  Learn about the bluff morphology here and recent erosion in this recentky published paper: Points and Walsh (2026).