Like many of the communities on New Jersey’s barrier islands, Seaside Park and Seaside Heights are still rebuilding in the wake of Sandy. Disasters like Sandy underscore the tough reality that East Coast communities face: barrier islands are dynamic by nature, and constantly shifting beneath us.
In May 2013, we visited New Jersey's Barnegat Bay Island with Norbert Psuty, a geomorphologist and retired Rutgers University professor. Psuty took us to three different locations and answered our questions about the natural and human forces that shape New Jersey’s iconic shorelines.
Island Beach State Park
What is a barrier island?
Barrier islands are this kind of lineation, this ribbon of sand that we have along the East Coast. Basically all the sand you see up and down the east coast of the United States is material that was inundated, drowned by sea level rise [over the past 10 thousand years or so]. Waves and currents began to move some of that sediment around. Sand comes from the offshore areas, propelled by waves and currents, and accumulates along the shore in the form of beaches and dunes, like what we see here at Island Beach State Park.
In this video clip, Rutgers University Professor Emeritus Norbert Psuty describes the key shapes and features of a natural dune and beach system.
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