Engineers & Geologists

CEM Environmental Engineering, Chap 1 and skim Chap.4, 5, 6

1. Discuss the major problems of the coast (rising sea level, erosion, and development).
2. Describe how the coast attempts to reach a dynamic equilibrium.
3. Understand that a range of solutions, from doing nothing to hard solutions, exists for coastal problems.
4. Understand how geologists and engineers approach the coast from different perspectives, and we must find a common ground between the two approaches.

1. Discuss the probabilities of hurricane danger to the U.S. East Coast, and how these vary with location.
2. Describe the coastal damage from hurricanes.

1. Differentiate the major erosional and accretional features of shorelines.
2. Discuss the factors affecting coastal geology..
3. Discuss the man-made factors affecting coastal geology.
4. Describe coastal classification systems, especially the preferred system based on plate tectonics (collision coasts and trailing edge coasts).  

1.  Understand the key variables for waves, including the wave climate (T, H_o , a_o), and the equivalence of the subscripts H_o and H_{¥ .}
2. Discuss measurement of waves in the nearshore environment and offshore.
3.  Calculate wave length, celerity, and wave height for waves approaching the shore, using linear wave theory and a table of d/Lo.
4. Understand how group velocity changes as a wave approaches the shore.
5. Discuss the changes in wave shape, water orbitals, height, and wavelength as it approaches the shoreline.
6. Calculate wave refraction for the simple case of straight coasts with parallel contours (Snell’s Law). 

1. Classify wave breakers (spilling, plunging, and surging) and the beach and wave conditions responsible for them.
2. Discuss the complications in determining where a wave will break.
3. Discuss the differences in Airy and Stokes wave theories.  
4. Discuss the relationships between the bar and wave breaking.

1. Describe the features of a coastal pass.
2. Discuss how the balance between the longshore current and bypassing determines the stability of a pass.
3. Discuss why the pass controls the tidal asymmetry in the lagoon.
4. Discuss the efffect of jetties on the pass system.

1. Discuss the morphodynamics of clastic shorelines in relation to tidal range.
2. Describe the reflective to dissipative continuum for beach classification.
3. Discuss the annual shift in shoreline classification with the winter/storm and summer/swell profiles.

1. Discuss the minerals found on beaches, and what controls the distribution.
2. Discuss the types of bedforms and their relation to sediment size and flow velocity.
3. Understand the difference between basal shear stress and the critical basal shear stress.

1. Know the phi scale and be able to convert between phi units and mm.
2. Know the limits of the sand size range.
3. Know the variables that define the lognormal distribution: mean and standard deviation.
4. Calculate mean, median, standard deviation, and skewness for sediments with lognormal distributions.
5. Graph and interpret sediment size analyses, on both normal probability paper and typical graph paper. 

1. Discuss the relationships of rip currents and longshore currents to the angle of attack.
2. Use the Longuet-Higgins equation to calculate the velocity of the longshore current.
3. Discuss why rip currents occur at regions of low breaker height.
4. Discuss the relationship of cusp formation to rip currents.

CEM Longshore Transport, p.4-14 to 4-15.

1. Understand the concept of closure depth, and the equilibrium profile, and the Bruun rule.
2. Discuss the concept of a coastal cell.
3. Discuss how waves sort sand.
4. Know the three ways the coast can respond to sea level rise.

CEM Longshore Transport, p.4-12 to 4-15; 6-2 to 6-5.

1. Understand the major categories of a sediment budget, and why many workers add a third category (convecting process) to the sinks and sources.
2. Explain the following sediment sources: rivers, shoreline erosion, transport from offshore, wind, carbonate productions, and beach replenishment.
3. Explain the following sediment sinks: inlets and lagoons, overwash, dune storage, offshore slopes, submarine canyons, deflation, carbonate loss, and mining and dredging.
4.  Know the magnitude of annual sediment budgets.

1. Describe how sedimentary facies respond to transgressions and regressions.
2. Discuss how fossils, sedimentary structures, and rock types can reveal sedimentary facies.
3. Describe the motion of sediments under tidal flows in marshes.

1. Discuss the effects of a seawall or revetment on the beach in front of the structure, including reflection and scour, and the effect on adjacent properties.
2. Describe the differences between seawalls, revetments, and bulkheads.

1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of nourishment.

2. Discuss the possible sources for sand for nourishment, and the criteria for a good source.

3. Discuss where the sand for nourishment can be placed, and the advantages and disadvantages of each location.

4. Discuss the debate about the success or failure of beach nourishment projects.

1. Discuss the effects of a seawall or revetment on the beach in front of the structure, including reflection and scour, and the effect on adjacent properties.

2. Discuss the effects of groins on the nearshore environment, and the design criteria (length and spacing).

1.  Discuss the uses and effects of detached breakwaters.
2. Describe the causes and effects of tsunamis.

1. Discuss the types of military operations in the nearshore.
2. Describe how the environment effects military operations in the nearshore, with specific examples from Tarawa, Normandy, and Inchon. 

1. Describe the mechanisms that can produce significant sea level rise, and the time periods over which they operate.
2. Discuss the problems in computing sea level rise from tide gauge records.

1. Discuss the important Federal legislation affecting the course.
2. Discuss why a rational response to coastal problems eludes us.