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posted by janrinok on Friday November 07 2014, @11:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the life-is-a-beach dept.

John R. Gillis writes in the NYT that to those of us who visit beaches only in summer, beaches seem as permanent a part of our natural heritage as the Rocky Mountains but shore dwellers know that beaches are the most transitory of landscapes, and sand beaches the most vulnerable of all. Today, 75 to 90 percent of the world’s natural sand beaches are disappearing, due partly to rising sea levels and increased storm action, but also to massive erosion caused by the human development of shores. The extent of this global crisis is obscured because so-called beach nourishment projects attempt to hold sand in place(PDF) and repair the damage by the time summer people return, creating the illusion of an eternal shore. But the market for mined sand in the US has become a billion-dollar annual business, growing at 10 percent a year since 2008. Interior mining operations use huge machines working in open pits to dig down under the earth’s surface to get sand left behind by ancient glaciers.

One might think that desert sand would be a ready substitute, but its grains are finer and smoother; they don’t adhere to rougher sand grains, and tend to blow away. As a result, the desert state of Saudi Arabia brings sand for sandblasting all the way from Australia. Huge sand mining operations are emerging worldwide, many of them illegal, happening out of sight and out of mind, as far as the developed world is concerned. "We need to stop taking sand for granted and think of it as an endangered natural resource," concludes Gillis. "Beach replenishment — the mining and trucking and dredging of sand to meet tourist expectations — must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with environmental considerations taking top priority. Only this will ensure that the story of the earth will still have subsequent chapters told in grains of sand."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:01PM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:01PM (#114078)

    Sand doesn't disappear, it just moves. For instance, Sandy Hook on the northern New Jersey shore continually has sand moving from the beaches along its length towards the point. This has caused the lower part of the peninsula to become extremely narrow with only a few yards between the ocean and the estuary inside it, while the lighthouse, which was built at the point, is now I think nearly a mile from the current point. There is a constant battle to keep the shipping channel off the point clear and to keep the ocean from breaking through and creating a new inlet, not to mention inundating towns like Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach which are part of the same peninsula. Some of the sand dredged from the point is dumped back along the beaches but it just starts moving north again. Sea walls and jetties are built and maintained at great expense to attempt to slow the process, but as long as there are waves, tides and storms it is an inexorable process.

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