SHORELINE CHANGE ALONG FIRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE:
Annual Monitoring Report, 2007-2008
Natural Resource Data Series
NPS/NCBN/NRDS—2010/042

Dr. Norbert P. Psuty, Tanya M. Silveira, Aaron Love

Sandy Hook Cooperative Research Program
Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences
Rutgers University
74 Magruder Road
Highlands, New Jersey 07732

March 2010

U.S. Department of the Interior
National Park Service
Natural Resource Program Center
Fort Collins, Colorado

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Introduction

This is the first of a series of Annual Reports of the change in shoreline position along the ocean side of Fire Island from inlet to inlet. This first report follows the protocols described in Psuty, et al. (2009) that were applied for the first time on Fire Island in the fall of 2005. Subsequent surveys conducted in the spring of 2007, the fall of 2007, and the spring of 2008 provide the temporal span for this annual report.

The goal of the annual report is to document the collection of the shoreline position data and to describe the short-term variation that has occurred. The changes in position are generally descriptive of the seasonal contrasts (lower energetics in the summer period versus higher energetics in the winter period) that support accumulation during summer and erosion during the winter. However, there are many other variables that affect the gains and losses of sediment and the displacements of the beach, especially along a barrier island, such as Fire Island. Therefore, the short-term annual report is but the first step in the understanding of the conditions that characterize the island and is meant to establish a baseline of information for subsequent characterization and analyses. Discussions and analyses of vectors of shoreline change and likely associations will be the theme of the longer-term (5 years) Trend Reports.

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