In effort to combat land loss, UNO professor to track sand movements

Photo courtesy of The Water Institute of the Gulf.

In an effort to support coastal restoration projects in decreasing powerful storm surge which leads to flooding and dangerous ecological impacts and preventing land loss, University of New Orleans earth and environmental sciences professor Mark Kulp and a team of researchers have procured technology to aid them in tracking the movement of fluorescent ecotrace sand pellets.

The Water Institute of the Gulf awarded a $108,728 grant, funded through the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), for a yearlong coastal restoration project to analyze the movements of the sand pellets on the westernmost barriers of Lafourche Parish.

This analysis could also support future restoration plans by determining a potential location for forthcoming sediment placement.

“The whole idea is to be more effective and efficient in the money and the effort we are spending on these beach ‘renourishment’ projects,” Kulp said in a news release.

The restoration project will sustain more than 300 acres of beach, marsh and dune along seven miles of shoreline to lower storm impacts, while also adding 9.2 million cubic yards of sediment to safeguard critical infrastructures including the hurricane evacuation route of Highway 1 and Port Fourchon.

Kulp’s team determines how a sand pellet is transported by utilizing a technique called particle tracing using fluorescent replicates, which are replicas of real grains of sand with a fluorescent hue to aid in analysis.

Researchers will analyze transportation trends along the western Caminada Headland between Raccoon Pass and West Belle Pass in Lafourche Parish using these fluorescent pellets.

“You want that particle to be just like the regular sand in terms of density and size and other characteristics,” Kulp said. “Basically, we’ll have four different sample sets over the course of a year-and-a-half to indicate how these particles moved around this particular part of the Coast.”

Kulp said the samples will be sent to a company that specializes in analyzing sand grains. Researchers will submit a final report by Spring 2024.

The CPRA organizes projects that create and enhance coastal wetlands in Louisiana, while periodically assessing dynamics of the sediment for sustainability of the ecosystem.

“Once we know where those fluorescent particles are moving to along the shoreline, then we can make some interpretations about how the sediment is being transported,” Kulp said. “What that means for restoration projects is that maybe we learn we shouldn’t have put so much sand at this location because the sand gets transported way offshore. Or, if we put it here, it stays in the system and actually helps rebuild the beach more effectively.”

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