Evan B. Goldstein

• PhD
• Scientist at Sediment LLC

On sandy coastlines, foredunes provide protection from coastal storms, potentially sheltering low areas—including human habitat—from elevated water level and wave erosion. In this contribution we develop and explore a one-dimensional model for coastal dune height based on an impulsive differential equation. In the model, coastal foredunes continuou...

Accelerated sea level rise and the potential for an increase in frequency of the most intense hurricanes due to climate change threaten the vitality and habitability of barrier islands by lowering their relative elevation and altering frequency of overwash. High-density development may further increase island vulnerability by restricting delivery o...

In Earth-surface science, numerical models are used for a range of purposes, from making quantitatively accurate predictions for practical or scientific purposes (‘simulation’ models) to testing hypotheses about the essential causes of poorly understood phenomena (‘exploratory’ models). We argue in this contribution that whereas established methods...

Vegetated coastal dunes grow as a result of feedbacks between vegetation and sand transport. Observing the coevolution of vegetation and the sand surface is therefore critical for unraveling the dynamics of coastal dune growth. Capturing synchronous topography and photography at high spatial resolution and high temporal frequency using traditional...

Coastal communities around the world are experiencing flooding due to sea level rise (SLR). At a local level, flood hot spots are often well known, but the causes and frequency of flooding are not well understood. This is in part because the floods are hyper-local and therefore difficult to monitor, and in part because there are many drivers that c...

Given the inevitability of sea-level rise, investigating processes of human-altered coastlines at the intermediate timescales of years to decades can sometimes feel like an exercise in futility. Returning to the big picture and long view of feedbacks, emergent dynamics, and wider context, here we offer 10 existential questions for research into hum...

The world’s coastlines are spatially highly variable, coupled-human-natural systems that comprise a nested hierarchy of component landforms, ecosystems, and human interventions, each interacting over a range of space and time scales. Understanding and predicting coastline dynamics necessitates frequent observation from imaging sensors on remote sen...

Plain Language Summary When a coastal storm drives water up and over the crest of a beach, sediment gets picked up by the flow and deposited behind the beach. That deposit, which might settle among dunes, on a marsh, or on the streets of a neighborhood, is called washover. Knowing the total volume of washover delivered by a storm event helps coasta...

Segmentation of Earth science imagery is an increasingly common task. Among modern techniques that use Deep Learning, the UNet architecture has been shown to be a reliable for segmenting a range of imagery. We developed software–Segmentation Gym–to implement a data‐model pipeline for segmentation of scientific imagery using a family of UNet models....

Segmentation of Earth science imagery is an increasingly common task. Among modern techniques that use Deep Learning, the UNet architecture has been shown to be a reliable for segmenting a range of imagery. We developed software - Segmentation Gym - to implement a data-model pipeline for segmentation of scientific imagery using a family of UNet mod...

The world’s coastlines are spatially highly variable, coupled-human-natural systems that comprise a nested hierarchy of component landforms, ecosystems, and human interventions, each interacting over a range of space and time scales. Understanding and predicting coastline dynamics necessitates frequent observation from imaging sensors on remote sen...

Overwash is the cross-shore transport of water and sediment from a waterbody over the crest of a sand or gravel barrier beach, and washover is the resulting sedimentary deposit. Washover volume, and alongshore patterns of washover distribution, are fundamental components of sediment budgets for low-lying coastal barrier systems. Accurate sediment b...

Barrier islands predominate the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines of the USA, where population and infrastructure growth exceed national trends. Forward‐looking models of barrier island dynamics often include feedbacks with real estate markets and management practices aimed at mitigating damage to buildings from natural hazards. However, such models thu...

Segmentation, or the classification of pixels (grid cells) in imagery, is ubiquitously applied in the natural sciences. Manual methods are often prohibitively time‐consuming, especially those images consisting of small objects and/or significant spatial heterogeneity of colors or textures. Labeling complicated regions of transition that in Earth su...

Shrubs are common – and presently expanding – across coastal barrier interiors (the land between the foredune system and back‐barrier bay), and have the potential to influence barrier morphodynamics by obstructing cross‐shore overwash flow. The ecological and geomorphological consequences of ecomorphodynamic couplings of the barrier interior, howev...

Anti-Racism in Women in Coastal Geoscience and Engineering AGU poster, URGE Session

Barrier islands predominate the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines of the USA, where development exceeds national trends. Forward-looking models of barrier island dynamics often include feedbacks with management practices – particularly those aimed at mitigating damage to buildings from natural hazards – and how real estate markets may be linked to barri...

Optical backscatter sensors (OBSs) are commonly used to measure the turbidity, or light obscuration, of water in fresh and marine environments and various industrial applications. These turbidity data are commonly calibrated to yield total suspended solids (TSS) or suspended sediment concentration (SSC) measurements for water quality, sediment tran...

Segmentation, or the classification of pixels (grid cells) in imagery, is ubiquitously applied in the natural sciences. Manual methods are often prohibitively time-consuming, especially those images consisting of small objects and/or significant spatial heterogeneity of colors or textures. Labeling complicated regions of transition that in Earth su...

Abstract Classifying images using supervised machine learning (ML) relies on labeled training data—classes or text descriptions, for example, associated with each image. Data‐driven models are only as good as the data used for training, and this points to the importance of high‐quality labeled data for developing a ML model that has predictive skil...

Coastal dunes are dynamic features that are continuously evolving due to constructive (e.g., wind and wave driven sediment transport) and destructive (e.g., elevated total water levels during storm events) processes. However, the relative importance of these processes in determining dune evolution is often poorly understood. In this study, ten lida...

Plain Language Summary Barrier islands and spits tend to move landward in response to sea‐level rise and storms when sediment from the beach is washed into the barrier interior and beyond, but tall dunes at the front of a barrier can prevent this process from happening for all but the largest storms. Here, we explore the interactions between dunes,...

Optical backscatter sensors (OBSs) are commonly used to measure the turbidity, or light obscuration, of water in fresh and marine environments and various industrial applications. These turbidity measurements are commonly calibrated to yield total suspended solids (TSS) or suspended sediment concentration (SSC) measurements for water quality, sedim...

Few datasets exist of high-frequency, in situ measurements of storm overwash, an essential mechanism for the subaerial maintenance of barrier islands and spits. Here we describe a new sensor platform for measuring bed-level change and estimating overwash inundation depths. Our MeOw (Measuring Overwash) stations consist of two ultrasonic distance se...

Few datasets exist of high-frequency, in situ measurements of storm overwash, an essential mechanism for the subaerial maintenance of barrier islands and spits. Here we describe a new sensor platform for measuring bed-level change and estimating overwash inundation depths. Our MeOw (Measuring Overwash) stations consist of two ultrasonic distance se...

The growing push for open data has resulted in an abundance of data for coastal researchers, which can lead to problems for individual researchers related to discoverability of relevant data. One solution is to explicitly develop services for coastal researchers to help curate data for discovery, hosting discussions around reuse, community building...

Abstract Extreme geohazard events can change landscape morphology by redistributing huge volumes of sediment. Event‐driven sediment deposition is typically studied in unbuilt settings – despite the ubiquity of occurrence and high economic cost of these geohazard impacts in built environments. Moreover, sedimentary consequences of extreme events in...

Streaming social media provides a real-time glimpse of extreme weather impacts. However, the volume of streaming data makes mining information a challenge for emergency managers, policy makers, and disciplinary scientists. Here we explore the effectiveness of data learned approaches to mine and filter information from streaming social media data fr...

Streaming social media provides a real-time glimpse of extreme weather impacts. However, the volume of streaming data makes mining information a challenge for emergency managers, policy makers, and disciplinary scientists. Here we explore the effectiveness of data learned approaches to mine and filter information from streaming social media data fr...

The growing push for open data resulted in an abundance of data for coastal researchers, which can lead to problems for individual researchers related to data discoverability. One solution is to explicitly develop services for coastal researchers to help curate data for discovery, hosting discussions around reuse, community building, and finding co...

Extreme geohazard events can change landscape morphology by redistributing huge volumes of sediment. Event-driven sediment deposition is typically studied in unbuilt settings – despite the ubiquity of occurrence and high economic cost of these geohazard impacts in built environments. Moreover, sedimentary consequences of extreme events in built set...

Wave-generated ripples are macroscopic roughness elements that influence fluid flow and sediment transport. For a major group of ripples (orbital ripples), morphology (height and wavelength) is set by the wave conditions. In natural conditions, where wave forcing is highly variable, ripple morphology is frequently changing. We investigate the rate...

Beaches around the world continuously adjust to daily and seasonal changes in wave and tide conditions, which are themselves changing over longer time-scales. Different approaches to predict multi-year shoreline evolution have been implemented; however, robust and reliable predictions of shoreline evolution are still problematic even in short-term...

Seagrass provides a wide range of economically and ecologically valuable ecosystem services, with shoreline erosion control often listed as a key service, but can also alter the sediment dynamics and waves within back‐barrier bays. Here we incorporate seagrass dynamics into an existing barrier‐marsh exploratory model, GEOMBEST++, to examine the cou...

After decades of study and significant data collection of time-varying swash on sandy beaches, there is no single deterministic prediction scheme for wave runup that eliminates prediction error – even bespoke, locally tuned predictors present scatter when compared to observations. Scatter in runup prediction is meaningful and can be used to create...

Despite decades of regulatory efforts in the United States to decrease vulnerability in developed coastal zones, exposure of residential assets to hurricane damage is increasing — even in places where hurricanes have struck before. Comparing plan-view footprints of individual residential buildings before and long after major hurricane strikes, we f...

Encroachment of woody plants into grasslands has occurred worldwide and includes coastal ecosystems. This conversion process is mediated by seed dispersal patterns, environmental filtering, and biotic interactions. As spatiotemporally heterogeneous, harsh environments, barrier islands present a unique set of challenges for dispersal and establishme...

Despite the importance of coastal dunes to many low-lying coastal communities and ecosystems, our understanding of how both climatic and anthropogenic pressures affect foredune evolution on time scales of years to decades is relatively poor. However, recently developed coupled numerical modeling tools have allowed for the exploration of the erosion...

A wide range of disciplines are building preprint services—web-based systems that enable publishing non peer-reviewed scholarly manuscripts before publication in a peer-reviewed journal. We have quantitatively surveyed nine of the largest English language preprint services offered by the Center for Open Science (COS) and available through an Applic...

Coastal dunes arise from feedbacks between vegetation and sediment supply. Species-specific differences in plant functional morphology affect sand capture and dune shape. In this study, we build on research showing a relationship between dune grass species and dune geomorphology on the US central Atlantic Coast. This study seeks to determine the wa...

We performed a series of laboratory experiments to study the growth and development of wave-generated ripples under constant and varying conditions. There are two aspects of our study. First, under time varying wave conditions, we measure the rate of ripple adjustment and the equilibrium mean ripple wavelength before and after the change in forcing...

A wide range of disciplines are building preprint services — cyberinfrastructure that enables publishing non peer-reviewed scholarly manuscripts before publication in a peer-reviewed journal. We have quantitatively surveyed nine of the largest English language preprint services offered by the Center for Open Science (COS) and available through the...

The EarthArXiv preprint archive, in operation for almost a year and a half, makes the latest Earth science research available to a wider community.

After decades of study and significant data collection of time-varying swash on sandy beaches, there is no single deterministic prediction scheme for wave runup that eliminates prediction error – even bespoke, locally tuned predictors present scatter when compared to observations. Scatter in runup prediction is meaningful and can be used to create...

A range of computer science methods termed machine learning (ML)enables the extraction of insight and quantitative relationships from multidimensional datasets. Here, we review the use of ML on supervised regression tasks in studies of coastal morphodynamics and sediment transport. We examine aspects of ‘what’ and ‘why’, such as ‘what’ science prob...

Key Points Humans make deliberate, real‐time interventions into geomorphic processes, especially during major storm events Existing morphodynamic models are not built to account for active, responsive human interventions Evolving model platforms may need to explicitly address active human interventions as morphodynamic processes unto themselves

Coastal landscape change represents aggregated sediment transport gradients from spatially and temporally variable marine and aeolian forces. Numerous tools exist that independently simulate subaqueous and subaerial coastal profile change in response to these physical forces on a range of time scales. In this capacity, coastal foredunes have been t...

Predictions of shoreline change are of great societal importance, but models tend to be tested and tuned for the specific site of interest. To overcome this issue and test the ability of numerical models to simulate shoreline change over the medium scale (order of years) we have organized a non-competitive competition where participants were given...

Despite decades of regulatory efforts in the United States to decrease vulnerability in developed coastal zones, exposure of residential assets to hurricane damage is increasing — even in places where hurricanes have struck before. Comparing plan-view footprints of individual residential buildings before and long after major hurricane strikes, we f...

Preprints — scholarly papers that precede publication in a peer-reviewed journal — speed the delivery and accessibility of academic work and lead to faster reuse by the scientific community, as evidenced by rapid citations and social media discussions. In the past year, EarthArXiv has emerged as a community-led initiative devoted to open scholarly...

Preprints — scholarly papers that precede publication in a peer-reviewed journal — speed the delivery and accessibility of academic work and lead to faster reuse by the scientific community, as evidenced by rapid citations and social media discussions. In the past year, EarthArXiv has emerged as a community-led initiative devoted to open scholarly...

Numerical models of coastal dune growth encode feedbacks and nonlinearities between sediment transport and plant growth. The range of processes and tunable parameters involved make model calibration an important step when using models for prediction. In this paper we outline a method to calibrate models of coastal dune formation and describe the pr...

A range of computer science methods under the heading of machine learning (ML) enables the extraction of insight and quantitative relationships from multidimensional datasets. Here, we review some common ML methods and their application to studies of coastal morphodynamics and sediment transport. We examine aspects of ‘what’ and ‘why’ ML methods co...

The Geological Society of America Bulletin was an early home for quantitative geomorphology research. Though geomorphology papers are not uniformly the highest cited papers in the Bulletin, many show ‘delayed recognition’ —they garner only few citations directly after publication, before suddenly being widely and numerously cited (sometimes decades...

Previous work on the US Atlantic coast has generally shown that coastal foredunes are dominated by two dune grass species, Ammophila breviligulata (American beachgrass) and Uniola paniculata (sea oats). From Virginia northward, A. breviligulata dominates, while U. paniculata is the dominant grass south of Virginia. Previous work suggests that these...

File S3: Interactive map of literature mentions as an ‘html’ file.

PRISMA checklist for literature review.

File S1. Methods distributed to each author at the beginning of the data collection.

File S2: PRISMA flow diagram.

We use genetic programming (GP), a type of machine learning (ML) approach, to predict the total and infragravity swash excursion using previously published data sets that have been used extensively in swash prediction studies. Three previously published works with a range of new conditions are added to this data set to extend the range of measured...

We integrate published data sets of field and laboratory experiments of wave ripples and use genetic programming, a machine learning paradigm, in an attempt to develop a universal equilibrium predictor for ripple wavelength, height, and steepness. We train our genetic programming algorithm with data selected using a maximum dissimilarity selection...

Because barriers are low-lying and dynamic landforms, they are especially sensitive to changing environmental conditions. The continued existence of barriers will depend on the degree to which these landforms can maintain elevation above sea level while also migrating landward. We are increasingly learning that ecomorphodynamic interactions (i.e.,...

We use Genetic Programming (GP), a type of Machine Learning (ML) approach, to predict the total and infragravity swash excursion using previously published datasets that have been used extensively in swash prediction studies. Three previously published works with a range of new conditions are added to this dataset to extend the range of measured sw...

Coastal foredunes form along sandy, low-sloped coastlines and range in shape from continuous dune ridges to hummocky features, which are characterized by alongshore-variable dune crest elevations. Initially scattered dune-building plants and species that grow slowly in the lateral direction have been implicated as a cause of foredune “hummockiness”...

The Geological Society of America Bulletin was an early home for quantitative geomorphology research. Although geomorphology papers are not uniformly the highest cited papers in the Bulletin, many show ‘delayed recognition’—they garner only few citations directly after publication, before suddenly being widely and numerously cited (sometimes decade...

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Coastal foredunes serve as a primary defence against storms and high water events. Dune morphology can determine how a dune functions as a barrier to storm impacts. Hummocky foredunes – those with alongshore variability in dune crest elevation – may have a greater potential for breaching during storm events compared to continuous foredune ridges. I...

Beach nourishment, a method for mitigating coastal storm damage or chronic erosion by deliberately replacing sand on an eroded beach, has been the leading form of coastal protection in the U.S. for four decades. However, investment in hazard protection can have the unintended consequence of encouraging development in places especially vulnerable to...

Vegetated coastal dunes grow as a result of feedbacks between vegetation and sand transport. Observing the coevolution of vegetation and the sand surface is therefore critical for unraveling the dynamics of coastal dune growth. Capturing synchronous topography and photography at high spatial resolution and high temporal frequency using traditional...

We use a machine learning approach to seek an accurate, physically sound predictor, to estimate the mean velocity for open-channel flow when submerged arrays of rigid cylinders (model vegetation) are present. A genetic programming routine is used to find a robust relationship between relevant properties of the model vegetation and flow parameters....

A bstract We have developed an exploratory model of plan view, millennial‐scale headland and bay evolution on rocky coastlines. Cross‐shore coastline relief, or amplitude, arises from alongshore differences in sea cliff lithology, where durable, erosion‐resistant rocks protrude seaward as headlands and weaker rocks retreat landward as bays. The mod...

We use a machine learning approach based on genetic programming to predict non-cohesive particle settling velocity. The genetic programming routine is coupled to a novel selection algorithm that determines training data from a collected database of published experiments (985 measurements). While varying the training dataset size and retaining an in...

Many studies focus on the emergence and development of rhythmic landscape patterns. In this contribution we explore the different behaviors found as patterns evolve; the trajectories that patterns exhibit as they transit from infinitesimal-amplitude perturbation to a statistically steady state (or in some cases to continued statistical evolution)....

Numerical models rely on the parameterization of processes that often lack a deterministic description. In this contribution we demonstrate the applicability of using machine learning, a class of optimization tools from the discipline of computer science, to develop parameterizations when extensive data sets exist. We develop a new predictor for ne...

We integrate published data sets of field and laboratory experiments of wave ripples and use genetic programming, a machine learning paradigm, in an attempt to develop a universal equilibrium predictor for ripple wavelength, height, and steepness. We train our genetic programming algorithm with data selected using a maximum dissimilarity selection...

1] We investigate the long-term evolution of inner continental shelf sorted bedform patterns. Numerical modeling suggests that a range of behaviors are possible, from pattern persistence to spatial-temporal intermittency. Sorted bedform persistence results from a robust sorting feedback that operates when the seabed features a sufficient concentrat...

The instability mechanism and finite-amplitude interactions leading to the emergence of shallow seabed 'sorted bedforms'-100 m to km scale swaths of coarse sediment, sharply segregated from fine sand domains, and arranged in sometime striking patterns-has been addressed. Here we present the results of recent numerical-model experiments revealing un...

Side-scan sonar observations have revealed a striking type of large-scale pattern adorning many inner continental shelves, in which the sediment is sharply segregated into swaths of coarse material separated by domains of fine sand. Coarse swaths, usually on the order of 100 m wide, often extend kilometers in the offshore direction. Previous work (...