Microbial source tracking (MST) has become a focus of some recreational beach monitoring programs. Suspected sources of contamination include human sewage, agricultural runoff, and feces from wildlife and domestic animals, depending on beach location. Waterfowl have been suggested as a primary source of fecal contamination at many beaches, but techniques to “prove” contaminating microbes are of...

Shoreline erosion problems caused by global warming and sea level rising may result in losing of land areas, so it should be examined regularly to reduce possible negative impacts. Initially in this study, three sets of survey images obtained from the years of 1990, 2001, and 2010, respectively, are digitalized by using graphical software to establish the spatial coordinates of six major beache...

Threats to beaches have accelerated the coastal destruction. In recent decades, geotextile tubes were used around the world to prevent coastal erosion, to encourage beach nourishment, and to assist mangrove rehabilitation. However, the applications of geotextile tube in sandy and muddy coasts have different concerns as the geological settings are different. Applications of geotextile tubes in s...

Many species of birds breeding on ocean beaches and in coastal dunes are of global conservation concern. Most of these species rely on invertebrates (e.g. insects, small crustaceans) as an irreplaceable food source, foraging primarily around the strandline on the upper beach near the dunes. Sandy beaches are also prime sites for human recreation, which impacts these food resources via negative ...

Sargassum fluitans and natans, types of brown algae wash up on Galveston Island, Texas each year from May to August. Sargassum smells bad, hurts tourism and impairs sea turtle hatchings. Coastal managers are confronted with the difficult choice of cleaning Sargassum off the beach front or leaving it alone. The current beach management practice is to rake the algae with mechanical tractors and d...

Tourism and residential population growth are increasing on the Galápagos Islands, yet the effects of this growth on environmental quality are not well understood. The goal of this study was to characterize recreational water quality on one of the inhabited islands of the Galápagos (Isla San Cristóbal). Five beaches were sampled to allow a comparison between beaches with and without discharge o...

Forced by tides and waves, large volumes of seawater are flushed through the beach daily. Organic material and nutrients in seawater are remineralized and cycled as they pass through the beach. Microorganisms are responsible for most of the biogeochemical cycling in the beach; however, few studies have characterized their diversity in intertidal sands, and little work has characterized the exte...