State of Maine's Beaches in 2009

Review of Beach Responses

This portion of the report will progress in a north-to-south format, starting with the northernmost monitored beach, Willard Beach in South Portland, and ending with Long Sands Beach, in York. No discussions of overall beach conditions and characteristics will be made, as this was completed in the previous report. However, we will review apparent impacts, as evidenced by individual beach profiles, immediately post-Patriots' Day Storm, and beach and dune recovery over the next two years.

As data are available, each beach profile will be first described in terms of the visual impacts of the storm to the 2006 pre-storm profile shape. For this study, we consider the immediate 2007 post-storm beach profile to represent the "erosion level benchmark" from which each profile must recover. The recovery of each profile in reference to the post-storm shape will be discussed.

As part of this review, we assign a recovery "grade," based on the amount of recovery (or lack thereof) exhibited by each profile location, and the overall beach. The grading system is qualitative, and described in Table 2. We will also generally relate the overall beach recovery to the 2006 pre-storm profile shape, though this will not be used as the benchmark for comparison in terms of determining the level of beach recovery.

After a grade is assigned to each profile location at a beach, an averaged, overall score will be calculated for the entire beach. Note that in this ranking system, we consider an A and B to be very good recovery, a C to be considered a satisfactory (but cautionary) recovery, and a D and F to be an unsatisfactory outcome for the beach recovery.

The Beaches

Contents Introduction Beach Responses Discussion Conclusions References

Last updated on November 19, 2009