ABSTRACT
Worldwide, most beaches are suffering from serious and accelerating erosion (Pilkey and Young 2009). Major factors responsible for this erosion include rising sea levels, sand mining, regional subsidence from tectonic causes (amplified in many places by oil and gas extraction), increasing tropical storm intensity driven by global warming, use of groynes that block long-shore sand transport (stealing sand from the neighbors), and seawalls that are built too close to the shoreline (to protect buildings that should never have been permitted so near the water’s edge) due to lax or irresponsible planning (Pilkey and Wright 1988; Pilkey and Dixon 1996). The only beaches that show clear net growth are a few yellow or brown quartz sand beaches, made up of mineral grains washed into the sea from erosion of rocks on land. These are growing in a few places where massive deforestation has greatly increased erosion of soils and rocks, causing increased transport of sand to beaches near river mouths.
