In Neskowin, OR, riprap in front of these homes has narrowed the sandy beach in front of them into a narrow strip.
(Photo credit: Rena Olson Surfrider Foundation).
February 20, 2026
By Rose Rimler
Protecting coastal property without sacrificing the sandy shore is a growing challenge. Oregon Sea Grant-supported researchers are developing solutions inspired by nature.
Oregonians take their beaches seriously. In 1967, when a hotel owner in Cannon Beach roped off a section of sand for guests only, locals erupted in protest, and Governor Tom McCall dramatically helicoptered in to hold a press conference on the beach. Thus was born the Oregon Beach Bill, which cemented the public’s right to walk, picnic, build sandcastles, and otherwise enjoy every inch of the sandy shore.
Today, Oregon’s beaches aren’t just a cultural icon; they pump about $3.8 billion a year into the state’s recreation economy1. But those same beaches take a beating from big waves and storms, and the usual fixes — seawalls, jetties, and riprap— can actually make things worse.
By bouncing wave energy back into the sand, this “hard armoring” can actually speed up erosion and block beach replenishment, leaving shorelines narrower and more fragile over time.
“Frankly, we've known for a long time that hard armoring destroys the beach and is harmful,” says Dianna Turner, co-chair of Friends of The Dunes in Cannon Beach. “They're solutions for another time, for another century.”
The Beach Bill actually prohibits such structures on the shoreline, but it allows exceptions and exempts any property developed before 1977. Landowners can apply for permits to restore their shoreline armoring, and they are typically granted. This means that riprap is still the most common method of shoreline protection in Oregon. But the damage these hard structures do to the beach is getting harder to ignore. Storms, which already bring 30 foot waves to Oregon’s coast, are expected to become more frequent and more intense. Plus, newer developments need alternatives that are in keeping with the Beach Bill. This leaves coastal engineers with a problem. How to protect beachfront property without harming the beach?
Potential solution: Dynamic revetments
Oregon Sea Grant has been funding research into softer, “nature-based” solutions. One idea is to mimic a type of beach structure that occurs naturally in some parts of Oregon and Washington: a layer of stones on the upper part of the beach, also known as a cobble berm.
“We know that the cobble berms are there naturally, so they must be stable, right?,” says Greg Wilson, associate professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University (OSU.) “They've been there for thousands of years, so they're not going to just erode away. So the thought is that if we can encourage that type of a beach by putting more cobble there, that that too would be stable, and that would give a buffer for protecting the coast.”
With Oregon Sea Grant support, Wilson and others have been looking closely into these so-called “dynamic revetments.” The name sounds technical, but the idea is simple: instead of a rigid wall, you build a fortification that can shift with the waves. Picture breaking a seawall into its individual rocks and scattering them along the beach. When big waves roll in, their force gets soaked up by those loose stones as they tumble and move with the surf.
In practice, there’s a lot more we need to know before we go around scattering cobble onto beaches. Engineers need to consider how much cobble to place, what size the cobble should be, how far it should extend on the beach, and exactly where it should be placed. To make these decisions, they need to understand what to expect from cobble beaches under different conditions.
So Wilson, alongside OSU associate professor Meagan Wengrove, got to work. His team installed cameras to observe waves at two natural sand-and-cobble berm beaches and one experimental beach with a dynamic revetment. Meanwhile, Wengrove and her graduate student, Hailey Bond, radio-tagged individual cobbles and tracked their movement over time, periodically going for a “treasure hunt” with a GPS reader to track the cobbles as they moved about the beach.
The researchers collected data for several years, including during the extreme waves of a King Tide event. Eventually, they developed a mathematical model that will help engineers estimate maximum wave height on such beaches. Last year, the model was published in the peer-reviewed journal Coastal Engineering. Additionally, Wengrove’s and Bond’s work will help engineers estimate how much cobble will be lost over time, and how much maintenance to expect.
“So all those things we're trying to address by understanding the natural system first and then passing that information along to make better engineered versions or approximations of the natural system,” says Wilson.
Nature’s other clues
There’s another natural buffer between the sea and the shore: sand dunes.
Communities in Oregon have long sought to tame the dunes, using strategies like planting invasive beachgrass or even trucking sand away from the dunes in a process called “grading.” But that might affect their ability to weather storms or block a future tsunami, says Wengrove. One of her main research questions moving forward is “if you grade your dunes down for coastal views, which is a practice that's done in Oregon, then how does that change your resilience during a tsunami event or even during a storm event?”
For a long time, experts have felt the need to reach out to coastal communities to educate them about these issues. But increasingly, locals are the ones reaching out. For example, OSU Extension has received multiple requests from coastal homeowners for advice on what to plant to help manage erosion. Oregon Sea Grant Extension specialists are currently working with botanists and other experts to put together a guidebook on native plants useful for erosion control, which will be a first of its kind in Oregon.
“Ready to move on”
Overall, it seems like coastal communities are looking for newer, softer solutions. “I think the community is ready to move on,” says Turner. Last year, something significant happened that suggests she’s right. Cannon Beach officials denied a local hotel’s request to replenish beachfront rip rap, citing the harm riprap poses to sandy beaches. A similar request in Lincoln Beach was also denied.
Turner knows that solutions like riprap are sometimes unavoidable, but she’d like to see coastal communities embrace other shoreline protections as well. As scientists roll out softer alternatives, she’s hopeful that more landowners will give them a try—for the sake of the beach.
“You have to take care of the things you love. You can't take them for granted,” she says. “If you want to keep it, you have to be aware you have it, and you have to be willing to protect it.”
1Winter storms can generate ocean waves (greater than 10 meters) that cause bluff and dune erosion. High water levels, combined with large storm waves, are the major factors that drive the erosion; during extreme spring tides, the tidal range can be three to four meters (source: Oregon Coastal Hazards Ready Library and Mapper).