Oregon Sea Grant Video Transcript:
(Video: Tuba Ozkan-Haller)
(Tuba Ozkan-Haller): "What we're trying to do here is figure out how beaches recover after very many storms, after being subjected to a lot of storm waves during the winter months.
"My name is Tuba Ozkan-Haller and I'm an assistant professor in the College of Oceanic Atmospheric Sciences here at Oregon State University.
"People who have lived near the coast know that in the summertime the dry beach actually increases. There's more sand that is just sitting on the dry beach area in the summertime. And that sand actually goes away in the wintertime because of the storms and forms a bar, sort of a submerged island offshore. It's the way that the beach protects itself."
(Video: animation of beach recovery)
(Tuba Ozkan-Haller) "As the summer then approaches again during springtime, waves move that bar, that mound, back onto the beach. And, we found out that we're actually very bad at predicting how that happens or figuring out exactly what about the waves makes that sand move back onto the beach."
[End of excerpt]
© 2007 Oregon Sea Grant,
Oregon State University