Hurricane Idalia may have made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region, but its impact have been felt along Pinellas County beaches.
Storm surge caused by the Category 3 storm resulted in significant damage to the beaches, and now officials are determining how to restore them amid a dispute over property rights.
Ping Wang is a professor in the University of South Florida School of Geosciences who specializes in coastal research.
He discussed the efforts Tuesday on Florida Matters.
He said renourishing the beaches is expensive. But as he points out, it's more than just aesthetics.
He also provided before-and-after photos that show the widespread destruction to shorelines across Pinellas County.
Some of the comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Pass-a-Grille
You've studied coastal erosion, this part of Florida, too, is a place you've been looking at for a long time. Put it in context, how bad is it?
We've been studying it since 2000, so over 20 years now and combined beach and dune erosion. And this is the worst that I have measured so far.
When you think about dunes as well? How important are they in preventing further erosion or stopping some of the worst impacts of a storm, and what impact down the track is the dune erosion from Hurricane Idalia going to have?
It's going to be fairly significant. So dunes serve quite a few purposes. Actually, one for storms and, kind of because it's higher, it can really protect the infrastructure behind. However, there is a caveat, it's that dunes are made out of sand. So if the storm is very long lasting, then the dune will get gradually eroded away. So it's more of like a soft protection. And without storms, the dune tends to actually grow, tends to actually grow because the sand on the beach will get warmed by wind into the dune field. And then gradually, the dune field will grow. It's also occupied by vegetation. However, for that particular dune growth to happen, we need to have a healthy beach. See, if the beach is narrow - some locations along our coasts, the beach is narrow; even without storms, some places, the beach still erodes - then the dunes sometimes don't get eroded just by normal conditions. But most of the dune erosion tends to happen during storms, simply because dunes rise high. So in regular weather, the ocean does not quite get to the dune, right, the dune stays there unless the beach is gone, then the wave attacks the dune directly.
Belleair Beach
I wonder though, is there a limit to how much can be done to prevent erosion? At what point does it become impractical to keep replenishing the beaches with sand through human activity?
So that question has been studied for a while. The solution is not as easy as we can come up with, because beach nourishment, although it's a soft solution, you know, the sand gets eroded away, it is the best solution we have so far. And if you look at the history of shore protection, it's actually interesting, the evolution, sort of speaking. We started with rocks. We started with a building wall. We started with a building structure. The New Jersey coast is a perfect example. Every time we got into some sort of trouble, we put seawall, we put groins. And it took us, the coastal community, about 30, a good 30, 40 years to realize that actually doesn't really work. Just because the piece of rock or the wall stays and does not move, but the sand around it still will move. Then we realized, actually, just putting the sand back on the beach and strategically putting the sand back on the beach is actually a more economical and more successful approach. How sustainable it is, is still, is a question that we are still thinking through researching.
Madeira Beach
On the other side of the beach, like inland, what impact do buildings close to the beach have on the beach structure itself? Can they be beneficial? Are they detrimental to the beach or is it just something completely separate?
There has been various studies, I got into that study myself some. And my answer is if the building or whatever, the seawall, the building, the riprap or inland jetties, if they come in contact with the ocean, with the wave, then they will influence the beach, right? So actually, believe it or not, our beach, our entire coast, almost entire coast, we have a seawall. We have a seawall with all this nourishment we've been doing over the last 30, 40 years. You don't really see them, they're deeply buried way behind. And this storm actually eroded out quite some seawall that I have not seen for 20, 30 years. I went to school at USF, actually, in the early, mid-90s. So some of the wall has been buried since then.
Indian Rocks Beach
Where is that wall exactly? Where is that stretch of wall?
And usually, you know, if you go to the coast, usually they're like underneath the dunes. Usually you'll see the house, usually see the house, the front of the house. And depending on how far, you know, the house is set back, usually in the front of the house there is a seawall. But today, in only very few places you'll see the seawall because, you know, the benefit of putting sand on the beach is that when you put the sand, the beach remains healthy for a certain period of time. Then the sand gets blown into the dune, then the grass grows. The wall, we didn't bury them purposely. It's the, you know, the natural processes that have them buried, and it worked over the past 20, 30 years. So this is an interesting storm in that it's kind of a perfect storm to cause beach erosion. Let's just see compared to Ian down in Fort Myers. And what happened is the water level rises so fast, the way the beach, the dune over there is very small, the beach and dune went under very quickly. And from our assessment, actually, the amount of sand that is lost by that storm may not be as much as this storm. So the sand loss, beach erosion is related to the energy, the strength of the storm. And there's also other factors at play.
Sunset Beach
I've been speaking with Ping Wang, professor in the University of South Florida School of Geosciences specializing in Coastal Research. Professor Wong, thank you so much.
Thank you.
