The volunteer observer program was only partly successful. Observers 

 were recruited through newspaper advertisements, telephone calls, and 

 invitations to onlookers who expressed interest during the surveys. 

 U.S. Naval officers, hotel personnel, charter boat captains, housewives, 

 and schoolteachers were among those who volunteered to become wave 

 observers . 



Observations were made over a period of 29 months between July 1974 

 and November 1976. A complete outline of wave observer history is in 

 Appendix H; seasonal averages of wave observations for each site are 

 in Section VI . 



Visual wave observations at the 18 profile lines were also made by 

 the authors on most of their monthly and poststorm surveying trips. 

 The resulting data were punched on cards and mean wave heights, periods, 

 and standard deviations were plotted at VIMS. These data are also 

 discussed in Section VI. 



4. Data Processing . 



Raw survey data (distance and height) were taken in the field on 

 specially designed computer keypunch forms (App. F-1). The data were 

 punched directly from these forms onto cards at VIMS and processed 

 in a computer program that generated data which was then transcribed 

 onto CERC Form No. 121-72. Another set of VIMS punched cards 

 was run in a second program called COMPARE. The COMPARE program 

 literally compared each survey with t.he survey measured at the same 

 location from the previous month, and gave the beach change (either 

 erosional or accretional) as the cumulative volume (cubic meters of 

 sand/linear meter of beachl (Colonell and Goldsmith, 1972; Goldsmith, 

 Colonell, and Turbide, 1972). 



CERC similarly processed the beach volume changes from their 

 forms, and the computational results were similar. However, CERC's 

 computations are presented and used throughout this report (App. B) 

 to promote uniformity with other CERC studies. The VIMS area com- 

 putations are used in the long-term trend analyses (App. C) because 

 of uniformity with the VIMS profile data bank. 



For both the CERC and VIMS computations, erosion was defined as 

 a negative net volume change, and accretion as a positive net volume 

 change, for the area surveyed along the profile line. The profile 

 line extended from the MSL datum determined by the surveyors, land- 

 ward to an arbitrary point at, or equivalent to, the crest of the 

 foredune ridge (i.e., the number one pipe). Thus, this net volume 



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