Combing our coast for unexploded ordnance

Thursday, April 7, 2022
Female student pushes a GPS cart across a beach in winter

Our beaches and coasts shift and rearrange as storms and waves push sand around, sometimes burying and uncovering objects. On beaches near military activity or testing grounds, unexploded ordnance can be a real danger, so researchers with UNH School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering director Diane Foster’s lab are working to understand how sandy beaches hide or reveal ordnance in a new research project. Here, UNH ocean engineering major Jane Schwadron ’24 pushes a mobile GPS cart to measure the elevation of Wallis Sands Beach in Rye, N.H. Her findings will help us understand how and when unexploded ordnances may reveal themselves on our beaches and coasts.

Photographer: 
Tim Briggs | NH Sea Grant | Tim.Briggs@unh.edu