The recent intense hurricane activity in the Northeast Gulf of Mexico has prompted the design and construction of numerous beach restoration projects in the Florida Panhandle and Alabama. In Pensacola Beach, efforts are underway to restore the 8.2-mile length of Gulf of Mexico shoreline via large-scale beach nourishment and dune restoration. It is estimated that the project will require the placement of about 4.0 million cubic yards of sand. In addition to the myriad of technical issues that are typically associated with large-scale beach nourishment projects, sand color has become perhaps the most important sediment characteristic in determining a suitable borrow site for purposes of beach nourishment. While projects in other locales certainly place a value on the appearance/color of the nourishment material, the matching of the nearly-white native sands of the Florida Panhandle present a somewhat unique and difficult challenge. This paper presents an overview of the proposed 2002-2003 Pensacola Beach, FL, beach restoration project and the 2000-2001 Pensacola Beach Sand Search Investigation. The Sand Search Investigation revealed that the standard scales for grading sediment color are insufficient to characterize the Panhandle native sands, thus the full Munsell Color Scale, discussed herein, must be applied. Additional studies performed to estimate the lightening of sediments due to weather exposure and oxidation provided a means of predicting the improvement in color of the constructed beach fill sediments.
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