VIMS

News

December 19, 2023: Congratulations to Coastal Geology Lab PhD Student Mary Bryan Barksdale, whose first dissertation chapter was published online today at Nature Communications! This is a very neat study of the erosion of marsh and lagoonal deposits along the beaches and shorefaces of the rapidly migrating Virginia Barrier Islands, with implications for blue carbon storage.

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September 28, 2023: In a wild turn of events, Chris testified in front of Congress today. Specifically the US House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries. A recording of the hearing is available here.

June 26, 2023: Huge congratulations to Coastal Geology Lab PhD CANDIDATE Elizabeth Davis, who today passed her qualifying exam. This after also submitting her first peer-reviewed manuscript over the weekend. Watch this space to learn more of what Liz is up to!

May 10, 2023: We've published our second announcement about our IGCP Project 725 "Forecasting Coastal Change" meeting in Florianopolis, Brazil on 21-27 October 2023. More details and cost estimates are now available. The full second announcement is posted here

April 17, 2023: The Coastal Geology Lab is going to be co-hosting the first meeting for IGCP Project 725 "Forecasting Coastal Change" in Florianopolis, Brazil on 21-27 October 2023! For more information, check out this PDF.

October 30, 2022: Big time! Chris made the marquee of the Island Theater in Chincoteague, where he presented the Coastal Geology Lab's recent research to a sold-out (~200 person) crowd. Photos credit of Emily Hein, VIMS. 

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July 7, 2022: New paper! Working with Giulio Mariotti of LSU, we've tested a new numerical model of barrier-island dynamics here on Virginia's Eastern Shore. The outcome? Oyur prediction that barrier-island retreat will accelerate by 50% by 2100, even in the unlikely case of no further increase in the present rate of sea-level rise. Check out the paper, published in Nature Geoscience, or the VIMS write-up here. For a taste, check out the map of historical change along the VA Barrier Islands:

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June 30, 2022: Huge news, as the Coastal Geology Lab has had it's second Graduate Fellowship awardee this year! Congratulations to PhD Candidate Kayla Cahoon on receiving a Virginia Sea Grant Graduate Research Fellowship! More info here: https://vaseagrant.org/2022-graduate-research-fellows/ 

May 18, 2022: Wow, wow! Coastal Geo Lab masters (and soon to be PhD) student Mary Bryan Barksdale was today awarded a two-year Margaret A. Davidson Fellowship from the NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve program. Congratulations MB!

February 16, 2022: Paper alert! Mahina Robbins' senior thesis was published today as a peer-reviewed manuscript in Geomorphology. This paper quantifies area/volumetric changes in the Virginia Barrier Islands over the last ~180 years, and explores some of the responsible mechanisms. Check it out here, or drop us an email for a copy.

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February 5, 2022: Chris was honored today to receive the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award from William & Mary. And grateful for some very nice write-ups on the award from William & Mary and VIMS.

January 26, 2022: With the start of the new semester, we wanted to wish a warm (and in some cases long overdue) welcome to the lab to FOUR new undergraduate students: Ally Gravgaard Nathaniel Ingle, Ethan Stewart, & Grace Weeks. Check out our People page for more info on this great new team of young coastal geoscientists.

November 15, 2021: The VIMS Coastal Geology Lab had a MAJOR milestone today, as we celebrated the successful PhD dissertation defense of Justin Shawler. Congratulations Dr. Shawler! Justin is next heading off to a career with the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. 

Shawler Defense Photo

August 30, 2021: With the start of the new semester, we're excited to announce two new developments in the Coastal Geology Lab. 

First, we welcome Mary Byran Barksdale, a new MSc student, co-advised by Chris Hein and Matt Kirwan. For more on Mary Bryan and her work, see our lab's People page.

Secondly, Chris is excited to announce he has taken the reins as co-director of the VIMS/W&M Undergraduate Program in Marine Science. This incorporates our undergraduate Marine Science Minor, as well as undergrad contributions to research, outreach, and advisory service at VIMS.

July 20, 2021: Justin Shawler's second PhD chapter has been published (open access) in Quaternary Science Reviews! This manuscript, based on a ton of sediment cores, ground-penetrating radar, and geochronology, tells the 2500-year story of the formation and growth of Chincoteague, Assateague, and Wallops islands in northeast Virginia. Justin then goes on to calculated associated sand volumes sequested within these systems through time, and compare them to those contained within the islands to the south, and other progradational coastal systems globally. Congrats especially to Justin and W&M graduate co-authors Chloe Obara and Mahina Robbins. Check it out here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107096

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April 27, 2021: Congratulations to Sarah Grace Lott, who earlier today defended her undergraduate thesis in the W&M Geology Department, earning 'high honors'! Her study, conducted in collaborationwith colleagues from the Federal University of Santa Catarina's Coastal Oceanography Lab was of headland bypassing processes and landforms in the Ubatuba-Capri strandplain-spit system of São Francisco do Sul, Santa Catarina, Brazil. 

SGL_Thesis_Presentation   SGL Thesis Profile

October 29, 2020: Busy week . . . . but, pleased to share our newest publication, led by Ana Paula da Silva (now at Griffith University in Australia) and colleagues at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Out today in Scientific Reports this paper presents a record of changing Southern Atlantic wave climate during the last 5000 years as recorded in beach ridges at Pinheira, Brazil (one of my first study sites!). Check it out here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75265-5

October 27, 2020: Whelp, it's been more than six years since Justin Shawler joind the Coastal Geology Lab as an eager W&M undergrad majoring in Government, before going on to complete an honors thesis and is nearing completion of his PhD with our group. Today we are pleased to announce that he is putting that policy interest to work, as he has accepted a position as Coastal Scientist with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (Division of Watershed Stewardship, Shoreline and Waterway Management Section). Justin will be starting there in January and working to complete his PhD remotely over the months that follow.

October 26, 2020: Very proud to share today's news that Justin Shawler's first PhD chapter has been published in Sedimentology! This very cool (IMHO) study combines detailed chronostratigraphic field data from barrier islands throughout the US Mid-Atlantic coast with morphodynamic modeling to explore the role of antecedent substrate in modifying barrier-island migration behavior. What is truly novel here is the integration of the field and modeling data in a way rarely accomplished in single studies. Congrats to Justin, Coastal Geology Lab technician Jennifer Connell, W&M graduate Bianca Boggs, and collaborators Dan Ciarletta & Jorge Lorenzo-Trueba. Check it out here: https://doi.org/10.1111/sed.12798

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June 30, 2020: The team is just back from a nearly two-week, mask-wearing, socially distant field campaign to Virginia's Eastern Shore. Focused on Kayla Cahoon's MSc thesis work mapping Pleistocene geology and intrglacial sea-level highstands, this campaign resulted in collection of 12 Geoprobe cores for a total of 716 feet of sediment. Now, the real work begins . . . Shown in the photo below are (L-R): Cameron Clark (W&M ugrad), Sarah Grace Lott (W&M ugrad), Bruce (drill rig), Justin Shawler (VIMS PhD student), Jenn Connell (lab genie), Kayla Cahoon (VIMS MSc student), & Mark Lundine (UDel PhD student).

Geoprobing During Covid-19 Pandemic

May 20, 2020: Paper alert! Well, a book chapter in this case, authored by Chris Hein and collaborator Andrew Ashton. Published in the new Sandy Beach Morphodyanmics book edited by Derek Jackson & Andy Short, our chapter reviews the controls on long-term shoreline evolution and how associated progradational systems can record multi-decadal through multi-centennial coastal change.

May 6, 2020: We are pleased to share a new paper linking hydroclimate (Indian summer monsoon) & global carbon cycling via soils & rivers. Out today in Nature, this NSF-funded study finds a negative relationship between monsoon rainfall & soil C age on millennial timescales. What’s this mean? That warmer & wetter climate after the last glacial enhanced soil respiration & decreased soil C stocks. With climate change likely to increase rainfall in the tropics, this means accelerated soil C destabilization & addition of even more CO2 to the atmosphere. For more, see the VIMS story about this paper.

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April 6, 2020: We're pleased to welcome Elizabeth Davis as a new PhD student in our group in the fall! Liz is currently completing her masters at the University of Delaware studying the Savage Neck Dunes of the Virginia Eastern Shore. At VIMS she'll be working on our new project with collaborators Nick Cohn of the  U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center and Julie Zinnert of Virginia Commonwealth University studying artifical and natural sand dunes along the North Carolina Outer Banks. Welcome Liz!

December 27, 2019: Chris had the opportunity tonight to present the results of our many years of work studying erosion on Plum Island to those most impacted by that erosion. He gave an hour-long (plus 45 min of Q&A!) talk to an overflow crowd of >200 residents of Newbury and Newburyport at the Newburyport Senior Community Center, detailing our new understanding of coastal processes at this river-mouth barrier island, detailed in papers in Frontiers in Earth Science, Anthropocene Coasts, Coastal Management, and the Journal of Coastal Research. His talk was previewed in the Newburyport News and the Town Common

November 11, 2019: We're pleased & proud to announce two pieces of great news for PhD student Justin Shawler. First, he was recently awarded a highly competitive Maury Fellowship from the VIMS School of Marine Science. And second, after years of effort, the work developed from his W&M Geology honors thesis was published in the open-access Anthropocene Coasts. Check it out here: Tidal erosion and upstream sediment trapping modulate records of land-use change in a formerly glaciated New England estuary.

September 17, 2019: We are recruiting a PhD student to work on a new three-year grant funded by the NOAA Ecological Effects of Sea-Level Rise program. Titled “Is an old dune a more resilient dune? Assessing the importance of ecological history in coastal protection from storms and sea-level rise”, this project will couple stratigraphy, remote sensing observations, morphologic modeling, & ecology to study the resilience of natural & artificial sand dunes along North Carolina’s Outer Banks. This collaborative, inter-disciplinary project will include extensive field work at the USACE Field Research Facility and across the broader Outer Banks, including participation in the During Nearshore Event EXperiment (DUNEX, https://uscoastalresearch.org/dunex) in Fall 2020. Read the project abstract.

The student will join the VIMS Coastal Geology Lab and School of Marine Science starting in summer 2020. Top applicants will have strong quantitative backgrounds and an interest in coastal sedimentology. We particularly encourage applications from students from diverse backgrounds and demonstrating a commitment to the Institute's mission of diversity and inclusion.

June 3, 2019: PAPERS! Two manuscripts have recently come out from the group. The first, published in Frontiers of Earth Science, is developed in part from the masters thesis of Andy Fallon and senior theses of Sarah Baker and Brody Marino. It was funded by our NSF Coastal SEES project and explores the mechanisms driving cyclical erosion and human responses along Plum Island, MA. The second, led by collaborator Dan Ciarletta of Montclair State University, was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, and presents a new morphodynamic model of beach and foredune ridge formation, which allows us to quantify paleo sediment fluxes from preserved ridge morphology.

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May 30, 2019: Justin & Chris attended the Coastal Sediments 2019 meeting in Tampa Florida. Forgot to take pictures, but, better than that, each presented papers covering studies of Cedar Island evolution and of sediment trapping in beach ridges in Brazil and Virginia.

May 15, 2019: We are very pleased to announce that Kayla Cahoon (W&M 2019) has accepted our offer to join the VIMS Coastal Geology Lab! Check the People page soon for more info on Kayla and her masters thesis.

May 12, 2019: Graduation Day. Always bittersweet, as this time we send off into the world two young women of whom I am immensely proud: Bianca Boggs & Kendall King. Working with these students remains one of my greatest pleasures of this job. You can check below and see that I (Chris) am wearing the same outfit as last year. Except for the crown. That was created by Rowan Lockwood of the Geology Department to celebrate my earning tenure at VIMS! Photos Courtsey of the Boggs family.

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April 20, 2019: Seniors Bianca Boggs and Kendall King did an excellent job earlier today presenting their work at the W&M Geology Department's Senior Research Saturday. Congrats to both on a job really, really well done.

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March 31, 2019: The VIMS Coastal Geology Lab just returned from the 2019 Southeastern Section meeting of the Geological Society of America, held in Charleston, SC. PhD student Justin Shawler gave an outstanding talk on the role of antecedent topography in barrier-island behavior and each Jennifer Connell (lab tech), Bianca Boggs (W&M senior), Kendall King (W&M senior), and Soely Luyando-Flusa (2018 VIMS REU) presented posters on their research on barrier islands, marshes, and estuaries of the mid-Atlantic. Proud advisor Chris also gave a talk, served as conference Technical Co-Chair, and took a handful of grainy photos. Read more about the Geo Deparment's participation here.

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August 10, 2018: Busy week around here . . . today our paper, led by Kate French (formerly WHOI postdoc, now US Geological Survey) and Valier Galy of WHOI, was published (open access) in Nature Scientific Reports. I tweeted about it here. The short version: organic matter exported from rivers is old. 80% of plant waxes from the Ganges & Brahmaputra rivers are 1000s of yrs old, stored in soils & floodplains. The rest cycle in decades, and track paleoenvironmental change.

August 7, 2018: Second student defense in one week! Last week it was Soely, today it was Julie Krask! Julie did a great job defending her masters work using a combination of sedimentology and biomarkers from the Tijucas Strandplain in Brazil to study the imprint of terrestrial climate changes on coastal sedimentation. Congrats Julie!

August 1, 2018: An update to the post below . . . today Soely presented the results of her REU project, and she will soon be returning home to Puerto Rico. We will miss her, but she leaves here at VIMS an outstanding REU thesis and a robust dataset. Congrats Soely on a wonderful job!

May 29, 2018: Today we welcome to the lab VIMS REU student Soely Luyando-Flusa, a rising senior in the Department of Biology at the Universidad del Turabo, Puerto Rico. Her REU project will focus on human impacts on oyster populations and sedimenation in the upper Chesapeake Bay.

Soely Field Photo

May 28, 2018: Our newest paper, focused on the challenges of early career interdisciplinary research (specifically focused on climate change and its impacts) was published today. Check it out here: Overcoming early career barriers to interdisciplinary climate change research.

May 13, 2018: End of another era: graduation day in Williamsburg. Congrats to undergraduate Coastal Geo Lab group members Kate DeMarco (r) and Lauren Herbine (l), and best of luck to both as they move on to the next phase of life!

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May 3, 2018: Coastal Geo grad student Justin Shawler was awarded with a two-year Virginia Sea Grant Graduate Research Fellowship. Congrats Justin!

April 27, 2018: Chris was one of two VIMS physical coastal scientists recently awarded the College of William & Mary Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence. See the story here: Pair of VIMS Faculty honored with Plumeri Awards

April 15, 2018: Congrats to William & Mary and Coastal Geo Lab alum Jess Raff & VIMS Coastal Geo Lab grad student Justin Shawler on acceptance of their manuscript in Marine Geology: Insights into barrier-island stability derived from transgressive/regressive state changes of Parramore Island, Virginia. A first pub for both! This paper summarizes our findings from two years of field studies of Parramore Island, VA, and documents the time-varying roles of sea-level rise, storm impacts, and variable sediment fluxes in controlling the 1500-year evolution of the most robust barrier island on Virginia's Eastern Shore. 

November 13, 2017: This is a great day that happens once a year: we are very pleased to welcome our two new Coastal Geology lab members, Bianca Boggs and Kendall King, both juniors in the William & Mary Geology Department. For more on Bianca & Kendall, see our People page.

November 12, 2017: A bit of outstanding personal news work sharing on the lab website: Coastal Geo grad student Justin Shawler got engaged this weekend. Congrats Justin! This is a first for the lab, and I can show you one advisor who couldn't be happier!

September 27, 2017: Chris was recently awarded the College of William & Mary Alumni Fellowship Award. See the story here: Hein Receives W&M Alumni Fellowship Award

September 24, 2017: Andy Fallon's first peer-reviewed article from his masters work is out in Coastal Management! It features a hedonic housing value model informed by our geologic work on Plum Island, MA. Read more here: Adapting without retreating: Responses to shoreline change on an inlet-associated coastal beach

September 22, 2017: The VIMS Coastal Geology Lab, along with collaborators at Randolph-Macon College and the University of Delaware, held a field campaign and Technology Demonstration today, attended by Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia and other dignitaries. Some photos from the event:

Shawler GPR    NASA Sign Geoprobe Team Photo

VIMS Coastal Geo Field Crew    Governor Geoprobe

 

September 17, 2017: New paper alert! Chris' work studying 19 kyr of climate, surface processes, and carbon sequestration in the Ganges-Brahmaputra basin is out in EPSL! Highlights include: (1) organic carbon burial efficiency remains high in spite of large variations in monsoon strength; and (2) temporal, climate-driven changes in sediment provenance within the basin are observed, possibly linked to monsoon rainfall focusing. Read more here: Post-glacial climate forcing of surface processes in the Ganges-Brahamaputra river basin and implications for carbon sequestration.

April 7, 2017: A lot of good news from current and former students in our team this week: Justin Shawler received an ExxonMobil/GSA Student Geoscience Grant to support his coring/modeling work on Cedar Island, VA; Lauren Herbine received a Virginia Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Research Scholarship for her studies of marsh accretion behind the VA barriers; and Brody Marino accepted a grad school offer from the University of South Carolina to complete a masters in geography. These are the things that make an advisor very proud. Congrats all!

March 30, 2017: VIMS Coastal Geology group students Julie Krask and Jess Raff both gave excellent presentations at the Southeastern Section meeting of the Geological Society of America. Justin Shawler also presented some sweet strat sections and garnered a lot of good discussion at his poster. Great job all! 

March 24, 2017: The VIMS Coastal Geology group: we #standwithscience

Coastal Geology Stand With Science

March 18, 2017: Jess has officially accepted a position in the graduate program at Vanderbilt University working with Dr. Steve Goodbred. She'll be missed, but we couldn't be happier for her. In the meantime, thankfully, there is still that pesky issue of her honors thesis & graduation . . .

February 16, 2017: Julie passed her masters qualifying exam today, following an excellent presentation laying out her approach to studying the role of climate change in driving sedimentologic changes in the Tijucas Strandplain (southern Brazil) ove rthe last 6000 years. Congrats Julie!

January 23, 2017: VIMS highlighted our research on the Virginia barrier islands (Charlie's Geology paper, published in early December) in a neat interactive website.

December 13, 2016: Chris presented a talk today at AGU on his postdoc work studying changes in monsoon strength and focusing, carbon burial, and Bengal Fan growth over the last 19,000 year. Check out more here: Post-Glacial Climate Forcing of Surface Processes in the Ganges-Brahmaputra Basin and Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle

December 8, 2016: Charlie Deaton's 2015 William & Mary senior research was published online today in the journal Geology. A fantastic achievement by this young scientist! This work traces barrier island and marsh change on the Eastern Shore of Virginia over the last 150 years and tests the so-called "runaway transgression" hypothesis, finding that any couplings between barrier island dynamics and associated backbarrier marshes are entirely overwhelmed by independent barrier-island migration, likely driven by changes in longshore sediment supply. Check it out here: Barrier island migration dominates ecogeomorphic feedbacks and drives salt marsh loss along the Virginia Atlantic Coast, USA. Please feel free to contact us for a pdf copy if you do not have online access.

October 20, 2016: Check back soon because we'll have some good news to share about the research work of lab group alum Charlie Deaton . . .

August 15, 2016: Congratulations to Rebecca Whitney on successfully defending her fantastic summer REU project studying the sources and geochemical signatures of 9000 years of sediment delivery to Plum Island.

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June 6, 2016: Welcome to Rebecca Whitney, VIMS REU student for summer 2016! Rebecca will be working with us on organic carbon analyses from our 20+ m core sections from Plum Island, investigating sediment sources through time as part of our SedS-RACE Coastal SEES project.

May 1, 2016: The fully formatted, final version of our paper in Sedimentology on basin infilling and the formation of the Tijucas Strandplain in southern Brazil went online today. You can find the paper here: Complex coastal change in response to autogenic basin infilling: An example from a sub-tropical Holocene strandplain. Please feel free to contact us for a pdf copy if you do not have online access.

January 23, 2016: The results of nearly 10 years of work on the Tijucas Strandplain in southern Brazil were published online today at Sedimentology. This part of our work there looks at the infilling of Tijucas Bay during the Holocene transgression, highstand, and regression. You can find the paper here: Complex coastal change in response to autogenic basin infilling: An example from a sub-tropical Holocene strandplain. Please feel free to contact us for a pdf copy, and look for a future announcement when the properly formatted final paper goes online.

January 1, 2016: Happy new year! And welcome to Julie Krask, the newest member of our group, who is shifting the focus of her graduate work from elsewhere at VIMS and will be working on our studies of Tijucas, Brazil.

Andy, all suited up, defending his masters.

December 1, 2015: Congrats to Andy Fallon, who successfully defended his masters thesis here at VIMS today! Now, about turning those two chapters into papers . . .

November 15, 2015: Chris has started using Twitter for science communication (a bit). Follow him @coastalgeology

November 2, 2015: W&M senior, Justin Shawler, and VIMS Coastal Group alumn, Charlie Deaton (W&M '15), both presented their research on sediment export from the Merrimack River and barrier migration in Virginia at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Baltimore, MD, today. Great job both!

October 26, 2015: W&M senior and VIMS Coastal Geology group member Justin Shawler presented his summer 2015 REU research at the highly competitive Council on Undergraduate Research REU Symposium at NSF Headquarters in Arlington, VA today. Very well done!

October 21, 2015: Masters degree candidate Andy Fallon scheduled his defense date today! December 1st. Tick tock, tick tock . . . .

August 16, 2015: We're looking to add to our team through the addition of a graduate student (masters or PhD level) in Fall 2016. If interested, check out the details of ongoing projects across this website and then contract Chris Hein for more information: hein@vims.edu.

July 31, 2015: Another dualie of good news: First, we would like to welcome William & Mary junior Jennifer Connell to the lab group. She is going to be working on a number of projects over the next year, with the hope of designing a senior research project from the science that best catches her interest. And speaking of interesting science (like that transition!?), the second paper from our work in St. Pierre & Miquelon with collaborator Julie Billy and her former advisor at the University of Perpignan, Nicolas Robin, was published online yesterday at Geomorphology in pre-print form. Check it out here!

March 18, 2015: Two pieces of good news: (1) Andy Fallon (VIMS MSc '15) passed his qualifying exam for his masters; and (2) Justin Shawler (W&M BS '16) was awarded, and has accepted, a position with the NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program here at VIMS for summer 2015. Andy will be continuing his work on cyclical erosion/accretion patterns of northern Plum Island and hopes to defend his masters in September. Justin will be working on reconstructing fine sediment export from the Merrimack River during the time since European colonization. Congrats to both!

Chris Hein & Luis de Souza lecturing on the beach at southern Plum Island October 14, 2014: Last week, Chris, along with Byron Stone of the USGS, ran a field trip for the 106th meeting of the New England Intercollegiate Geologic Conference (NEIGC) to Plum Island and the lower Merrimack River Valley. This trip took a source-to-sink approach to the glacial, paraglacial and coastal history of this area. You can view or download the field trip guide here: Ice, water, and wind: A source-to-sink view of the glacial, paraglacial, and coastal sediments and processes that have shaped northeastern Massachusetts.

August 28, 2014: Today we welcome our newest group member - Claudia Shuman, who is starting on her PhD here at VIMS after recently completing her masters at the University of Delaware. Welcome Claudia!

August 6, 2014: The second paper from our work on the beach-ridge plain of St. Pierre & Miquelon was published online today at Marine Geology. This study, led by collaborator Julie Billy and her advisor Nicolas Robin of the University of Perpignan, looks at the architecture of this fascinating plain. You can find the paper here: Internal architecture of mixed sand-and-gravel beach ridges: Miquelon-Langlade Barrier, NW Atlantic. Please feel free to contact us for a pdf copy.

Hein presenting talk for VIMS After Hours Lecture Series in July 2014

July 28, 2014: Chris gave a VIMS "After Hours Lecture Series" talk on Thursday, July 31. The talk, entitled "Barrier Islands past, present, and future" was held at VIMS' Watermen's Hall, McHugh Auditorium. The lecture is now available online here: Hein After Hours Lecture Talk

July 10, 2014: The outreach website associated with our Coastal SEES project in Plum Island, MA has officially launched! Check it out at www.plumislandresearch.org.

Plum Island Research Project business card

May 15, 2014: We have welcomed a new member to our group! Unfortunately staying for only ~6 months, Luis Henrique Polido de Souza is a visiting student from the Laboratório de Oceanografia Geológica at the University of the Itajaí Valley (UNIVALI) in Itajaí, Brazil. While here, Luis will be working on our study of bay infilling at Tijucas as well as his undergraduate thesis study of phosphorites on the shelf break off the southern Brazil coast.

March 13, 2014: Our study of the fluvial sediment sources and supply rates to the barrier systems of the Gulf of Maine following deglaciation has been published online at the Geological Society of London: Evolution of paraglacial coasts in response to changes in fluvial sediment supply. Please feel free to contact us for a pdf copy.

February 1, 2014: The surficial geologic map of the Plum Island, MA area has been published online at the website of the Massachusetts State Geologist: Onshore-offshore surficial geologic map of the Newburyport East and northern half of the Ipswich Quadrangles, Massachusetts. High-res downloads of all three sheets and associated GIS files are available at that site. Or, you can view low-res versions on ISSUU: Sheet 1  Sheet 2   Sheet 3

January 7, 2014: Our study of the sedimentological sequences associated with the mid-Holocene highstand in Brazil has just been published online at GSA Bulletin: Coastal response to late-stage transgression and sea-level highstand. Please feel free to contact us for a pdf copy.

November 22, 2013:The Geprobe has arrived! Check out the video Dave Malmquist put together from its arrival at VIMS. Open house (with some practice cores to be collected) forthcoming once it warms up again in late winter / early spring. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rT4yd1AxIo&feature=youtu.be

October 29, 2013: We started a new page off of the Coastal Geology site - "Media". That page (see links to left) will provide all information on any media highlights of research, etc., rather than doubling up and having the same things listed on the News page as well.

October 22, 2013: The National Science Foundation (NSF) posted a press release on the Coastal SEES awards: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=129266

October 15, 2013: We are looking to recruit one new PhD student to start in fall 2014. Applications are now closed.

September 2, 2013: We have a website! This will have to suffice for news for the time being . . .