Naturalist Intern Chrissie Lanzieri has mapped the change in the Dewees shoreline from 2006 to 2008.  The change is dramatic and a bit scary.  In some places Dewees has lost 200 feet of beach.  Chrissie says the situation has deteriorated since the 2008 data was collected.  Even more beach has eroded.

Gary McGraw collected the data both years by walking along the scarpline and recording data points in his GPS.  You can view the data on either Google Earth or Google Maps.

If you want to see long-term data, check out the black and white satellite photo in the Nature Center in the Huyler House.  The colored lines show the position of the beach over more than 50 years.

Leslie Sauter from the College of Charleston also has an ongoing project to record the changes in Dewees’s beach.

If you haven’t already seen the loggehead turtle nesting site maps that Chrissie created, you should check them out to.  Click here to get the full story and see the turtle map.

Also be sure to stop by the Wet Lab at the Huyler House to ask Chrissie about her terrapin turtle headstart program.  The terrapins have been growing well.