October 24, 2016

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) recently completed two projects undertaken after Hurricane Sandy. The two projects, which were in collaboration with 13 Atlantic coastal states, included updating maps, consolidating databases of offshore sediment resources, and establishing the Atlantic Sand Assessment Project (ASAP), a geological and geophysical research initiative that aims to identify new sand resources in Atlantic coastal regions.

After Hurricane Sandy, BOEM was tasked with identifying and cataloging offshore sediment resources in the Atlantic Ocean. This was part of an overarching attempt to inform environmental assessments and offshore leases for BOEM’s Marine Minerals Program after the storm washed away six million cubic yards of sand from the eastern United States. 

The resulting reports from the Atlantic states and the BOEM resource mapping initiative will be made available on the BOEM Marine Minerals Program website. The results will also be presented at the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association conference  on October 26-28, 2016. Furthermore, the newly recovered sand cores from the eastern US are now housed at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The physical core samples collected for ASAP will be made available through Lamont’s System for Earth Sample Registration (SESAR).

Sources: American Shore & Beach Preservation Association, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Columbia University, U.S. Army