The Coastal dunes project team has just published the first report from their research on coastal beach-dune dynamics in CLLMM.
The team have spent the last three years investigating:
- historical and current beach–dune conditions
- future rates of dune migration
- dune mitigation strategies under future climate change and sea level rise scenarios.
Their first report outlines what they found out about coastal beach-dune dynamics and historical changes in the Victor Harbor to Kingston region.
The team found that different beach-dune systems in the region behave differently, with some systems eroding, some increasing, and others staying the same. A few beaches (Victor Harbor; Cape Jaffa) display consistent erosional tendencies, while very few beaches (e.g. Goolwa) display accretion or buildup.
The research found that there is no consistent trend in beach–dune erosion associated with (or able to be correlated with) sea level rise over the past 40+ years of survey record. It is likely that the ‘noise’ associated with regular or periodic erosion and subsequent accretion events, driven by storm and calm wave periods respectively, is significantly greater than any signal associated with sea level rise.
Want to dive into the detail? Find out how the region compares to other systems across Australia? You can download the full report here.