Excellent time learning to model compound flood events at @deltares.bsky.social today. Hugely grateful for @ncl-geography.bsky.social Impact Funding, meaning we can now incorporate this work into the Durham Heritage Coast plans over the coming years!

Feels good to be back at Blast Beach! Full site survey ahead of winter storm season @hassfacultyncl.bsky.social

And finally, a trip to climb St Mary’s lighthouse to draw the conference to a close. Thanks to all the delegates for an excellent few days.

Now off to the ferry terminal to start our Netherlands Physical Geography field course for a week!

Thanks to everyone attending the YCSE Conference at @newcastleuni.bsky.social! Yesterday was an excellent day of talks ranging from gravel, to kelp, to tsunamis, and today we head to St Mary’s Lighthouse for a conservation talk and lighthouse climb!

A beautiful morning setting up for today’s Young Coastal Scientists’ & Engineers’ Conference here at @newcastleuni.bsky.social Dove Marine Lab! We’re delighted to welcome 30 early career researchers and practitioners to our little corner of paradise!! @hassfacultyncl.bsky.social @sagencl.bsky.social

Professor Bob Kirk was a pioneer in mixed sediment beach research and many of his findings, thoughts, theories and ideas still drive the direction of research today. Delighted to contribute in a small way to this memorial piece in NZ Coastal News: www.coastalsociety.org.nz/assets/Uploa...

We have extended abstract submission for the UK Young Coastal Scientist & Engineers’ Conference until the end of the month! We’re excited to hear about your research - take a look at conference details here: conferences.ncl.ac.uk/ycsec2025/

Please pass on to any early career coastal colleagues!

Abstract submission closes on 20th December for the UK Young Coastal Scientist and Engineers Conference, being held in Newcastle 3-4th April 2025, full details here: conferences.ncl.ac.uk/ycsec2025/

Normally disconnected beaches round prominent headlands were still filled with spoil from updrift collieries, and the timing of changes along the coast was not uniform showing the lag effect as sediment moved south. Now we see massive erosion of the spoil platform as the beaches return to “normal”

We knew from historic maps this de facto mega nourishment (acknowledging the prolonged timescale) caused massive progradation, and anecdotally we heard about rapid retreat when tipping ceased. We used CoastSat to look at this in more detail and saw some initial retreat rates reached *12 m per year*

No one has ever really quantified the amount of sediment that had been dumped so we did some digging and estimate at least *39 million cubic metres* in the 20th Century (after converting from weight to volume using some of our own measurements of spoil density)

Our new paper looks at the long term changes we’ve seen on the Durham coast. The polluted beaches were made famous by the Michael Caine film, which ironically gives us some of the best contemporaneous imagery of what the sites used to be like … www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...