SUSSEX COUNTY, Del. - Keeping track of our ever-changing beaches. CoastSnap is a program that allows visitors and locals to snap photos of the beach as a way to track environmental changes. CoastSnap stations were installed in march. Now as we close out the summer, many people have taken part in this project.
People can come here to Broadkill, Indian River Inlet or Herring Point to take and upload their photos to CoastSnap through the app, email, or on social media.
“The winter time and spring the beaches tend to get narrower, as we go into summer and fall, they tend to widen out, we've seen that general behavior,” said Dr. Art Trembanis, professor at the University of Delaware.
Trembanis says the program is really starting to take off.
"We are learning tons, it's an unprecedented way for us to get to know and understand our coastlines in ways we have not been able to before,” he said.
SeaGrant and DNREC partnered with CoastSnap, which DNREC says is a form of community or citizen science.
“The idea that anybody at anywhere and anytime could be scientists collecting data to understand our natural world … a lot of the changes we see we need a lot of data to observe those changes, but it is impossible for one person or one program to collect that data,” said Kari St. Laurent, Research Coordinator at DNREC’s Coastal Monitoring Division.
The CoastSnap app shows all the locations where people are snapping photos of coastlines.
"We are trying to understand and unravel what portion of the beach changes that are going on over a months to years time scale, what is related to natural processes and what is being caused by changes to the climate, increased storms, what might be caused by modifications we make to the coastline like jettys,” said Dr. Trembanis.
CoastSnap began in Australia, made its way to the First State, and now they are working on expanding it to Puerto Rico. CoastSnap will release a report on its findings next spring. Visit https://www.deseagrant.org/coastsnap to get involved.