Stakeholder Efforts to Stem Beach Erosion Bolstered

Stakeholder efforts to stem beach erosion in Jamaica are progressing with the help of imagery being captured via a monitoring tower installed at Hellshire Beach in St. Catherine, under the Sandy Shorelines Project.

The images are transformed into numerical data-utilising software, which provides measurements on the extent of shoreline changes over time.

The project is being spearheaded by the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) with funding support from the Government of South Korea.

One main aim of the initiative is establishing a network for strengthening beach erosion monitoring across the Caribbean.

Acting Ecosystems Coordinator, Ecosystems Management Branch, National Environmental Planning Agency (NEPA), Chanel Raynor, indicated that the data generated “will influence any sort of hard engineering that should come [in the future], so that any plans that we have are informed by quantitative data”.

She was providing a project update during the launch of NEPA’s Adopt-A-Mangrove programme at Sturridge Park in the Palisadoes-Port Royal Protected Area in Kingston, on Thursday (February 2).

Ms. Raynor indicated that work to capture imageries started last year, adding that the project’s next phase will be to “fine-tune some maintenance and data analysis issues”, prior to becoming fully operational.

Meanwhile, Manager of Ecosystems at NEPA, Monique Curtis, advised that the Agency is seeking to install monitoring towers at other beaches across the island.

“We are still working on some of the nuances. This is the first time we’re doing it [in Jamaica and the] first time for the Caribbean also. But what we have been in dialogue with our partners [about] is, what is next. We have signalled to them that we do have other locations where we would want to focus this type of monitoring system as well,” she further informed.

The monitoring tower, according to Ms. Curtis, is one of the tools NEPA uses to capture data remotely at Hellshire Beach.

“We are now moving towards this kind of innovation, which is going to help us to track, more definitively, the change in terms of our beach width and the impact of beach erosion in that particular location,” she said.

The project, which is continuing with technical assistance from the Government of Cuba, is also being implemented in several other countries. These include Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago.