For 25 years, scientists have employed a network of
land-based video cameras called Argus stations to monitor coastal surf zones—including
a pioneering station at Newport's
Yaquina Head—in an effort to learn about the ever-changing dynamics of the surf
zone.
There are about three dozen Argus stations around the world,
and the data they have churned out have led to new revelations about beach
formation, erosion, rip currents, and other critical features.
Now scientists at Oregon
State University
and their colleagues are working to incorporate a new resource into the Argus
system—the hundreds, even thousands of cameras mounted above beaches around the
world and used by surfers, beach combers, weather watchers, and coastal hazard
specialists.
"There has been a proliferation of beach cameras around the
world and they’re out there taking pictures constantly, but they don’t
necessarily collect the scientific data that can be useful," says Rob Holman, a
professor of oceanography at Oregon
State and one of the
founders of the Argus system. "We think they can be tweaked into providing data
that will let us create a near-shore prediction model based on remote sensing."
Creating such a model, Holman says, would be "huge." If
scientists can map the bathymetry of a beach, analyze the physics of the waves,
and plug in water movement patterns, they could predict storm surges, hurricane
inundation, beach formation, dune stability, and dangers from rip currents.
Holman is coprincipal investigator on a five-year, $7.5
million grant from the Office of Naval Research that is designed to explore how
to meld data from radar, optics, and infrared observations to make such a model
a reality. OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences is partnering with
the University of
Washington and Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution on the project.
"We know enough about the fluid dynamics of the near-shore
to make a model that we think can work," Holman says. "What is lacking, though,
is the input data—especially the bathymetry. The surf zone changes every day
and bathymetry is critical for making successful predictions. The lack of such
data has always stopped us dead. If we solve that, we should be able to create
a model."
That's where the beach cameras come in. Holman and his
colleagues are working with an Australian company called Coastalwatch that has
hundreds of such cameras around the world. Getting those cameras to collect
measurable data at timely intervals would be invaluable, he says.
"If we could have, say, 10 well-designed sites along the Oregon coast instead of
just the one at Yaquina Head, it might do wonders," Holman says.
Holman worked on the prototype Argus station at Duck, N.C.,
in 1986. He and his colleagues "decided on a whim" to leave a camera and video
recorder at the beach and return later to see what it would record.
"We used to think that beaches were simple and repetitive,"
he says with a laugh. "If we understood the physics of one storm, we knew about
all storms. Then we learned about chaos."
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