CoastSnap
The idea of CoastSnap originally started in 2017 with the Water Research Laboratory at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Since then, CoastSnap has become a global monitoring project, active in a growing number of countries across 5 continents. There is now even a CoastSnap website and App should you want to find out more.
CoastSnap is a global community science project which has set out to capture the changing nature of our coastlines through repeat photographs. Thousands of people visit beaches around our coastline every day, each of them carrying a smartphone and more often than not, taking a photo of the coast. The aim of CoastSnap is to harness this potential invaluable information into something usable by coastal communities and scientists alike to better understand how a particular section of coast can change over time.
As part of the MS4S project, numerous CoastSnap stations will be installed at key dune beaches around Cornwall. Each CoastSnap will hopefully generate thousands of photographs of a dune and beach area, taken on a near daily basis.
Why is CoastSnap Useful?
A CoastSnap station consist of a camera cradle and instructional sign which asks the user to simply take a photo using a smartphone and the camera cradle and send them through for processing. Local or visiting members of the public are the driving force behind the success of this monitoring project as it is their photos which form this key dataset.
With enough photos taken across varying tidal stages, we can gain an insight into the long-term movement of beaches and dunes as well as the shorter-term impacts that high energy storm events. By building a catalogue of beach images we can begin to capture the near daily interactions occurring along a section of coastline.
The photo catalogue will be used by South West Coastal Monitoring (SWCM) and other interested parties, to generate outputs such storm impact visualisations and data on dune retreat or advance rates. Each CoastSnap user also benefits through joining thousands of others working toward a coastal monitoring dataset to track our shifting coastlines.
How can I get involved?
If you want to get involved; you can find the active and planned CoastSnap stations on the interactive map on the South West Coastal monitoring website.
Become a community scientist by using the camera cradle to position your smartphone and take a photo. Following the instructions on the accompanying sign, send the photos through to SWCM along with the date and time of capture. From there they are processed and aligned and made available for anyone to access online.
Sign up to Making Space for Sand
If you would like to get involved in helping to make dunes more resilient and biodiverse, want to help develop coastal adaptation and emergency plans or just want to know more about what the project is learning about coastal change, please click here:
