Airborne Laser Quantification of Florida Shoreline and Beach Volume Change Caused by Hurricanes

Abstract

OF THE DISSERTATION AIRBORNE LASER QUANTIFICATION OF FLORIDA SHORELINE AND BEACH VOLUME CHANGE CAUSED BY HURRICANES by William Robertson V Florida International University, 2007 Miami, Florida Professor Dean Whitman, Co-Major Professor Professor Keqi Zhang, Co-Major Professor This dissertation combines three separate studies that measure coastal change using airborne laser data. The initial study develops a method for measuring subaerial and subaqueous volume change incrementally alongshore, and compares those measurements to shoreline change in order to quantify their relationship in Palm Beach County, Florida. A poor correlation (R = 0.39) was found between shoreline and volume change before the hurricane season in the northern section of Palm Beach County because of beach nourishment and inlet dynamics. However, a relatively high R value of 0.78 in the southern section of Palm Beach County was found due to little disturbance from tidal inlets and coastal engineering projects. The shoreline and volume change caused by the 2004 hurricane season was poorly correlated with R values of 0.02 and 0.42 for the north and south sections, respectively. The second study uses airborne laser data to investigate if there is a significant relationship between shoreline migration before and after Hurricane Ivan near Panama City, Florida. In addition, the relationship between shoreline change and subaerial volume was quantified and a new method for quantifying