2.5 TB of date were collected during a 13-day field experiment at South Bethany Beach, DE following the Nor’Easter storm on Feb. 13th 2014. Data from 29 sensors deployed along the beach face, RTK topography surveys, and video imagery were quality controlled and processed into structured files for easy access.
Initial analysis focused on a 2-day window (2/23-2/24) during which quality data was available at almost all cross-shore measuring stations for a large number of consecutive swash events. During this time period all sensors were located along a cross-shore transect covering a 10-meter stretch of the surf zone on the seaward face of the RR system. Detailed analysis of swash-zone near-bed velocity profiles obtained from the 5 deployed Nortek Vectrino Profilers was performed to yield 3-D velocity profiles at closely-spaced cross-shore stations. Suspended sediment concentrations were computed using calibrated measurements from the deployed Optical Backscatter (OBS) sensors. Runup was delineated with the help of RGB imagery collected from a camera mounted on a retractable tower on the beach. Specific objectives included the detailed analysis of swash-zone hydrodynamics during RR onshore migration and the quantification of bed shear stresses, turbulence dissipation rates, sediment fluxes and sediment transport gradients to assess how the beach recovered.