EAGER: Collaborative Research: Longitudinal Investigation of Two Hurricane-Generated Barrier Island Breaches in Southwest Florida

Barrier island breaches have occurred during many tropical storms, constituting a major mechanism for tidal inlet formation, dune and beach erosion and development. Thus, they represent a major challenge to coastal management. The current understanding of the fate, physical processes, and impacts surrounding new and evolving breaches is limited due to the lack of comprehensive longitudinal studies capturing the breaching event and post-breaching evolution on monthly and annual time scales in a holistic and transdisciplinary manner. To address the current gaps in knowledge and data, this EArly-concept Grant for Experimental Research (EAGER) study investigates the development of two barrier island breaches from their original formation over multiple seasons and years, and their potential impacts on coastal management and infrastructure systems. The "high-risk high-outcome" study is expected to reveal new insights into the roles of hydrodynamics, land coverage, and geomechanical sediment properties on barrier island breach evolution, as well as into the impacts of these newly formed inlets on coastal infrastructure systems. It looks to unravel the importance of barrier island breach data collection for informed coastal management, planning, engineering design, and decision-making in coastal regions affected by storms. The data are expected to become a benchmark data set that will serve the wider coastal research community for calibration and validation of numerical and physical models and the development of new concepts, relationships, and theories regarding the geomorphological evolution of storm-induced barrier island breaches, local hydrodynamics, surrounding sediment and land-use conditions, coastal infrastructure, and the built environment.

Midnight Pass breach in Venice, Florida, and Milton Pass breach in Englewood, Florida, opened during the 2024 sequence of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and are located in the same geological and meteorological region. The two inlets will be investigated with focus on post-breach geomorphodynamics driven by small-scale variability in hydrodynamics, sediment properties, geomorphology, vegetation, and anthropogenic influences from engineering actions and land use. The study seeks to leverage and extend the interdisciplinary field data collections following the storms and in 2025, complementing the effort with analyses and initial application to existing numerical models. The project intends to also test and assess newly emerging instrumentation and cross-disciplinary data collection strategies for storm-related geomorphodynamics and infrastructure system performance research. The study seeks to build on and strengthens an interdisciplinary network of natural hazards sciences and engineering researchers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Award Number: 2540213
Principal Investigator: Michael Gardner
Funds Obligated: $25,477
State: CA