EDITORIAL: LEARNING FROM DISASTER
Scott Douglass and Samantha Danchuk, guest editors

BEACH PROFILE AND ISLAND CROSS-SECTION MANIPULATIONS IN RESPONSE TO AN OFFSHORE OIL SPILL
Scott L. Douglass, Bret M. Webb, Caren R. Dixon, and
Thomas Buhring

Dauphin Island, Alabama, responded to the BP oil spill emergency by artificially manipulating its beach profile. A pile of sand was constructed at, and just behind, the seaward crest of the natural beach berm (Note: the term “beach berm” here refers to the traditional coastal geology definition of the nearly horizontal part of the beach or backshore formed through the deposition of sand by wave action). This manipulation, the sand pile, successfully contained oil in a narrow zone along the beachface and oil was not spread across the beach width at any time. The sand pile was roughly 2 m tall with a base width of roughly 7 m and contained a volume per unit length along the shore of about 7 m3/m (3 yd3/ft). This technique might have been valuable elsewhere and might be valuable in future spill responses to reduce the width of oil deposits on the beach. Dauphin Island also manipulated a low portion of the barrier island with the construction of a small dune-like feature away from the water. The emergency dune was designed using the guidance of Hallermeier and Rhodes (1988) to reduce the likelihood of barrier island overwash with oily water.

EFFECTIVENESS OF RESPONSE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR AREA CONTINGENCY PLANNING: DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL SPILL, GULF OF MEXICO
Samantha Danchuk

Many of the response efforts used during the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico were similar to those used 50 years ago during the first deepwater well blowout. Unfortunately, booming strategies were still largely ineffective due to a lack of information in the Area Contingency Plan and lack of implementation of decades of research on hydrodynamic effects and boom configurations. A discussion of strategies used in Perdido Pass, Alabama, Pensacola Pass, Florida, East Pass, Florida, and St. Andrews Pass, Florida, is presented to illustrate the need for technical boom designs based on hydrodynamic forces and the need to incorporate such designs in contingency plans. Deployment times were slow in all of the inlets discussed. Structural failure was an issue in all of the inlets, prompting Perdido Pass and St. Andrews Pass to construct steel pile supported booms. Entrainment failure and improper boom angling occurred in all of the inlets except St. Andrews Pass (current speeds in St. Andrews Pass were slower than the others). Unequal levels of response across the areas are believed to have resulted from the lack of objective deployment of preset contingency plans. Onshore response and cleanup efforts are discussed to highlight topics that need to be addressed in the revised Area Contingency Plans. The Area Contingency Plan should incorporate environmental impact statements for the standard cleanup technologies to avoid ignorance of environmental considerations or delays in emergency permitting. Additionally, the Area Contingency Plan should consider all seasonal restrictions and events, i.e., sea turtle nesting season, hurricanes, and storm waves. While revisions of the Area Contingency Plans are needed immediately, incorporating the results of the long-term spill research as they become available will be essential to maintaining a useful Area Contingency Plan. By examining the effectiveness of the response measures implemented during the Deepwater Horizon spill, several of the items that need to be addressed in the revisions of the Area Contingency Plans have been identified.

THE DEEPWATER HORIZON INCIDENT: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR A LOCAL GULF COAST COMMUNITY
Phillip West

The city of Orange Beach, Alabama, was among the most heavily-impacted areas following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill -- both economically and environmentally. The beaches of Orange Beach and neighboring towns are the state’s most popular tourist destination. The Deepwater Horizon incident not only severely damaged the local and regional economy, but created numerous problems and challenges for residents and community leaders. This is an account from a local official dealing first hand with those challenges, and how this community evolved to deal with the nation’s worst environmental catastrophe.

IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF HURRICANE IKE ON BEACHES OF THE UPPER TEXAS COAST
Angela Witmer

Disturbance events such as hurricanes on sandy beaches can cause change in community assemblages. They also have the potential to cause massive, episodic sediment reworking and resuspension. On 13 September 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall on the upper Texas coast causing extensive damage and erosion. Although a Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale, the highest accompanying observed surge of 5.33 m in Chambers County was unusually high, resulting in significant changes in profiles, sediments, and infaunal communities of sandy beaches. To investigate these impacts, macrofaunal and sedimentological features of the intertidal zone were compared before and after Hurricane Ike at four beaches along the upper Texas coast. Roughly 0.5 meters of vertical height was lost at each beach post-storm. Sediment grain size increased with a decrease evident in the finer size fractions. Macrofaunal taxa richness declined by 33%. Total macrofaunal abundance declined <13% of pre-storm values and observed changes in abundance were statistically significant for each beach.

BEACH CHANGES ALONG THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COAST DURING THE 20TH CENTURY: A COMPARISON OF NATURAL AND HUMAN FORCING FACTORS
Antony R. Orme, Gary B. Griggs, David L. Revell, James G. Zoulas,
Carla Chenault Grandy, and Hongkyo Kooa

Rectified vertical aerial photographs and topographic LIDAR sets, geographic information systems, field observations, and historical data are combined to investigate morphological changes for 75 beaches around the Southern California Bight over a period of 56-77 years. These beaches occur within five discrete units: the Santa Barbara, Zuma, Santa Monica, San Pedro and Oceanside littoral cells. No cell-wide net erosional or net depositional trends are identified. Relatively natural beaches, lacking major human impacts, reveal modest cyclic narrowing and widening related respectively to El Niño and La Niña climatic forcing, and longer-term trends weakly related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. For beaches influenced by engineering structures, no such correlations occur but net changes over the period reveal two interrelated types of variation. First, hard structures predictably disrupt littoral drift within cells, with accretion occurring updrift and erosion downdrift of jetties and breakwaters. Sand-bypassing and other forms of artificial nourishment usually counter these effects. Passive erosion also occurs seaward of seawalls and riprap. Second, the longevity of artificial nourishment reflects the volume of fill introduced and whether or not retention structures are present. In most cases, the effects are short-lived, with nourished beaches eroding over a few years, leading to repeated and costly cycles of re-nourishment.

COASTAL OBSERVATIONS:
THE TIDAL BORE OF THE GARONNE RIVER, FRANCE
Hubert Chanson

O’BRIEN AWARD WINNERS:
AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD DORNHELM
Russell Boudreau