GEOMORPHOLOGY AND SEDIMENTS OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS BAY 



by 

 Eduard P. Meisburger 



I. INTRODUCTION 



1. Background . 



Ocean beaches and associated dunes provide a necessary and important 

 buffer zone between the sea and fragile coastal areas. At the same time 

 they provide public recreation areas for millions of people. The construc- 

 tion, improvement, and periodic maintenance of beaches and dunes by 

 placement (nourishment) of suitable sand along the shoreline can be an 

 important means of counteracting coastal erosion by providing stability 

 to shoreline positions and permitting recreational facilities (U.S. Army, 

 Corps of Engineers, 1971). Beach nourishment techniques (Hall, 1952) 

 have gained prominence in coastal engineering largely as a result of the 

 successful test program using a hopper dredge at Sea Girt, New Jersey, in 

 1966 by the U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers (1967), and the successful com- 

 pletion of the nourishment of Redondo Beach, California, in 1969 by a 

 commercial operator under contract to the Corps of Engineers (Fisher, 1970), 

 The Redondo Beach project determined that present technology is advanced 

 enough to make sand and gravel on the shallow parts of the shelves a 

 presently exploitable resource (Duane, 1968) and economically competitive 

 at some locations with previous methods (truck haul and drag scoop) for 

 sand transport and beach construction. 



Plans for initial beach restoration and periodic renourishment usually 

 involve large volumes of suitable sandfill. In recent years it has become 

 increasingly difficult to obtain suitable sand from lagoons and wetlands 

 or from inland sources in sufficient volumes and at an economical cost for 

 beach fill purposes. These difficulties are due in part to increased 

 land values, concern over environmental and ecological effects of removing 

 such large volumes of sand, diminution or depletion of previously used 

 land sources, and inflated transportation costs of moving the material 

 from areas increasingly remote from final destinations. Also, sedimentary 

 material comprising the bottoms of lagoons, estuaries, and bays is often 

 fine grained and rich in organics and is unsuitable for long-term effective 

 shoreline protection. While the loss of some fine silt material is to be 

 expected as a newly nourished beach attains a new state of equilibrium 

 with the sea environment, it is possible to minimize the losses through 

 careful selection of the most suitable fill material (Krumbein and James, 

 1965). 



The problems of locating suitable and economical sand deposits led the 

 U.S_. Army, Corps of Engineers, Coastal Engineering Research Center (CERC) 

 to initiate a search for exploitable deposits of sand. Exploration efforts 

 were focused offshore with the intent to locate and inventory deposits 

 suitable for future fill requirements, and later refine techniques for 

 specifying most suitable fill characteristics. 



