Nearshore nourishment is a common coastal flood risk management technique that can be constructed beneficially by using dredged sediment from navigation channels. A nearshore nourishment project was completed during the summer of 2021 in Harvey Cedars, NJ, USA, with 67,500 m³ of dredged sediment from Barnegat Inlet placed along approximately 450 m of beach in a depth of 3–4 m. In situ instruments were installed to monitor hydrodynamic conditions before and after dredged material placement, and nine topographic and bathymetric surveys were conducted to monitor nearshore morphological response to the nourishment. Shoreline location was extracted from satellite imagery using CoastSat software to compare historical trends to the shoreline response after construction. Seven months after construction, 40% of the nearshore nourishment was transported from the initial footprint and the centroid of the nourishment migrated towards shore and alongshore (north). The sheltering capacity of the nearshore berm appears to have captured an additional 58% of the placed volume from the longshore transport system and the beach width onshore of the placement increased by 10.9 m. Measured data, satellite imagery analysis, and rapid predictions all indicate that the nearshore nourishment at Harvey Cedars had a positive impact on the adjacent beach.

Regional-scale shoreline and beach volume changes are quantified using the Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise’s digital elevation model products in a change detection framework following the passage of the two landfalling hurricanes, Hurricanes Sally and Zeta, along the northern Gulf Coast in late fall 2020. Results derived from this work include elevation change raster products and a standard set of beach volume and shoreline change metrics. The rapid turn-around and delivery of data products to include volume and shoreline change assessments provide valuable information about the status of the coastline and identification of areas of significant erosion or other impacts, such as breaching near Perdido Key, FL, from Hurricane Sally’s impact. These advanced change detection products help inform sediment budget development and support decisions related to regional sediment management and coastal storm risk management.

The popularity of coastal imaging products has continued to grow in recent years due to decreasing costs and increasing image resolution and spatial coverage. Within USACE, the CorpsCam initiative was developed to help monitor coastal areas of interest and consists of three tiers: the research grade Argus system, a commercial off the shelf trail camera, and the crowd-sourced citizen science CoastSnap (Harley and Kinsela, 2022). Images captured at all tiers are transmitted over wireless cellular network to an internal server for processing and analysis. CorpsCam projects have focused on coastal monitoring and exploring new ways to quantify extracted features such as shoreline change, surface current measurements, and estimated bathymetry in the nearshore. This paper will investigate the accuracies of using low-cost cameras at various study sites to extract and quantify water level from imagery.