Evaluating Sediment Transport and Morphological Evolution of a Cross-shore Swash Zone Placement | W81EWF 24 SOI 0007

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81EWF 24 SOI 0007

This grant opportunity, titled "Evaluating Sediment Transport and Morphological Evolution of a Cross-shore Swash Zone Placement," is a US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineer Research and Development Center effort focused on testing and documenting a new way to move dredged sand from a navigation harbor directly onto a beach system in northwest Indiana. The setting is the southern shore of Lake Michigan near Crescent Beach, where beach nourishment is routinely placed from an upland source. After placement, that sand tends to move west under longshore currents and eventually contributes to shoaling in the Burn Harbor and Burns Small Boat Harbor navigation channels. Because maintaining those channels requires periodic dredging, USACE is looking at whether dredged sediment can be placed in a smarter, more direct way that benefits the adjacent shoreline while still meeting navigation needs.

The central idea being tested is an innovative "cross-shore swash zone" (CSSZ) placement at Portage Park near Burns Small Boat Harbor. Instead of placing dredged sand in a confined area or trucking it around on the beach, the dredge pipeline would discharge sediment directly into the active swash zone, where waves and currents can immediately begin reworking the material. As the shoreline builds outward (progrades), the pipeline position could be adjusted to keep placing material in the right zone, with the intent of building out a shore-perpendicular spit using far less heavy equipment staged on the beach. The project is essentially a real-world trial of whether unconfined swash zone placement can be a cost-effective and operationally practical technique for moving navigation dredged material into the subaerial (dry) beach system, while relying on natural processes to spread and reshape the placed sediment along a broader stretch of shoreline.

USACE is emphasizing that the project is not just about construction logistics; it is also about building a high-quality scientific monitoring record that captures how the shoreline and nearshore respond after placement. The stated goals include: learning how this construction method works in practice, analyzing the morphological evolution of the nourishment footprint over time, compiling a comprehensive field dataset that can later be used to validate numerical models of waves and sediment transport, and improving estimates of future dredging requirements by better understanding how sediment moves through the system.

To accomplish those goals, the funded partner is expected to deliver a fairly intensive field monitoring program spanning the beach and nearshore. The opportunity calls for five to six topographic surveys of the subaerial beach using backpack-mounted LiDAR (or a comparable approach). These surveys must be timed to capture key phases of change: one before construction, one shortly after construction, one about one month after construction, one during winter 2024 (ideally following the first storm event with offshore wave heights exceeding 1 meter for at least 4 hours), and another in spring 2025. The intent is to observe both immediate reshaping and storm-driven adjustments, which are often when the biggest changes occur in Great Lakes coastal settings.

In parallel, the awardee must collect five to six bathymetric surveys with coverage comparable to 25 single-beam cross-shore transects that span the placement area and nearby zones. These are meant to line up in time with the LiDAR topographic surveys so that the combined dataset describes the full beach-to-nearshore profile, not just the dry beach. Together, repeated topography and bathymetry allow the project team to compute volumetric change, track the migration of bars and berms, and quantify where the placed sediment goes.

Because hydrodynamics drive the reshaping, the work also requires continuous wave and current measurements in roughly 5 to 10 meters water depth for up to 10 months. That continuous record is meant to connect observed morphological change to forcing conditions such as storms, seasonal wave climates, and current patterns. In addition, the partner must measure sediment grain size distribution (sediment gradation) at 15 to 20 locations along a cross-shore transect that runs from the dune toe out to about 10 meters water depth. Those sediment samples are required at three key times: before nourishment, promptly after construction, and again in spring 2025. Sampling is expected to occur concurrently with bathymetric surveys so that sediment properties can be interpreted alongside profile change and seabed evolution.

There are also specific coordination and support tasks tied to USACE-led instrumentation. The partner must provide boat support for one to two days during construction so USACE researchers can collect EcoMapper turbidity data, which helps document suspended sediment and water clarity impacts during active placement. The partner must also perform minor cleaning and visual inspections of turbidity sensors that USACE will deploy, doing so while conducting the other fieldwork described above. These requirements indicate the project is designed as a collaborative field campaign where USACE supplies some sensors and research components while the awardee supplies major surveying, sampling, and operational support.

Beyond the Portage Park placement site, the grant includes an additional monitoring element at Crescent Beach to help infer sediment transport updrift of Burns Harbor and Burns Small Boat Harbor. Specifically, the awardee must complete two combined topographic and bathymetric survey efforts at Crescent Beach after a beach nourishment, spaced about one month apart. The topography again relies on backpack LiDAR (or similar), and the bathymetry consists of 31 cross-shore single-beam transects collected around the same time as the topographic work. The purpose is to help estimate alongshore sediment movement and, ultimately, improve predictions of how much material will accumulate in the navigation channels and how much dredging will be needed in the future.

Deliverables are not limited to raw data collection. The awardee is expected to quality control, analyze, and document the full dataset in a technical report or a peer-reviewed journal manuscript. That requirement signals that USACE wants the monitoring results to be defensible, well-documented, and usable for future engineering decisions, model calibration/validation, and transferability assessments to other sites where similar swash zone placement might work.

Administratively, this is a discretionary funding opportunity offered as a cooperative agreement under CFDA 12.630 by the Engineer Research and Development Center. The opportunity number is W81EWF 24 SOI 0007. The anticipated award ceiling is $142,500, with one expected award. The original closing date was 2024-01-26, and the opportunity was created on 2023-11-27. Eligibility is restricted to non-federal partners of the Great Lakes Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU), meaning applicants generally need to be part of (or able to work through) that CESU partnership framework rather than applying as an unrestricted open-competition applicant.

• The Engineer Research and Development Center in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Evaluating Sediment Transport and Morphological Evolution of a Cross-shore Swash Zone Placement" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.630.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2023-11-27.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-01-26. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $142,500.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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