Awesome Science Blog!: Beach Profiling

OooOooOooo now off to the good 'ole beach profiling! What is beach profiling? The technical term is that it is the intersection of a beach's ground surface with a vertical plane perpendicular to the shoreline. This just means that beach profiling is recording the surface of the beach. We want to do this because wind, rain, waves and other factors contribute to how the beach can change throughout seasons. It can create the beach to have more sand, less sand, bigger dunes or no dunes at all. Calculating it is a good thing, fore it lets us see how the weather and other elements can effect the beach and how quickly it did. It helps us understand how vastly the beaches surface can change in an amount of time.

In science class, we tested this ourselves. To do this, we needed the following materials:

Data Sheet-To collect the distances, height, location, as well as recording the visuals of the area.
GPS Navigation System-To get the exact location of our profiling spot.
Compass- To calculate the exact degrees of our profiling area.
Camera-To take pictures of our beach profiling experience.
Transect Tape-
Rise and Run Tools

Our procedure was this:

Go to location with materials.
Once at your location, find the latitude and longitude coordinates of your dune using your GPS. Record these on your data sheet as "Point A."
Then, lay your transect tape starting from that point all the way to the waterline. Check to make sure it is perpendicular to the waterline.
After, hold the compass tool at "Point A"to find out the direction in degrees of the transect line you just laid out. Record this on your data sheet as well.
Place the run tool on the ground at Point A along the transect tape. Looking at the level tool on the run tool, make sure it is level with the ground.
Now take the rise tool and place it at the end of the run tool, level, on the ground and aligned with the transect tape as well. This is "Point B."
Look were the rise tool intersects with the run tool and record it as the rise between Point A and Point B. If the dune tilts upwards (going uphill), then the number is negative. If the dune is sloping downwards (going downhill), then it is a positive number.
During each of your point's areas you should record any distinctive features around.
Now take the foot of the rise tool and put it at the end of the run tool. Keep doing this till you reach the "foot" of the beach (where the beach dips) and past the shoreline/wrackline.