On Wednesday, March 11, 2026, students in GLY 4734/6932 traveled to Florida’s Atlantic coast to witness coastal processes and the landforms they shape. Stops included: (1) Riverside park in Palatka, where we discussed the Quaternary geomorphic history of the Florida peninsula, (2) Anastasia State Park, where we examined the various elements of a dissipative beach […]
Graduate student Teagan Duenkel successfully defended her M.S. Thesis entitled “Quantifying Decadal Shoreline Dynamics and Volume Change at Matanzas Beach, Florida” on Feb. 19, 2026. In the thesis, Teagan explored the decadal-scale morphologic changes occurring within the various sediment reservoirs of the coastal zone (dune, intertidal, subtidal) and linked these changes to documented alongshore migration […]
Our research team presented 4 talks at the 39th Annual National Conference on Beach Preservation Technology, sponsored by the Florida Shore and Beach Preservation Association (FSBPA) and held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in St. Augustine Beach, Feb. 4-6, 2026. Copies of the presentations are available at the FSBPA website here. This meeting is an […]
Our research team presented a talk and a poster at the 37th Annual National Conference on Beach Preservation Technology, sponsored by the Florida Shore and Beach Preservation Association (FSBPA) and held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in St. Augustine Beach, Feb. 7-9, 2024.
Our group’s most recent graduate, Dr. Juan Felipe Paniagua-Arroyave published two papers in the latest issue of Continental Shelf Research. This work was done in collaboration with our colleagues in the research group of Dr. Arnoldo Valle-Levinson, in UF Coastal Engineering. The first of these papers examines tidal motions and infragravity waves interacting with the complex […]
Read more "New Pubs: Paniagua-Arroyave Et Al., Continental Shelf Research x2!"
Last week members of the UF Geomorph group attended the U. S. Coastal Research Program’s (USCRP) “Coastal Storms” workshop in St. Pete, Florida. We were treated to a tour of the Florida Institute of Oceanography’s (FIO) research vessel the R/V Weatherbird II and attended many excellent presentations on storm effects in the coastal environment. The […]
On Saturday March 17th the UF Geomorph group participated in the 12th annual Department of Geological Sciences outreach event “Can You Dig It?” held at the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH). Our “tide tank” is 4′ x 4′ x 1′ basin equipped with a recirculating pump, a barrier island, a tidal inlet, and wind-generated […]
On Friday, February 9, 2018, Juan Felipe Paniagua Arroyave successfully defended his PhD Dissertation “Hydrodynamic Processes Associated with the Evolution of Cape-Related Shoals”. Pani has been a star within the UF Geomorphology group for the last 5 years and will be greatly missed, but we are happy to report that he will be moving on to a […]
This month, our group has offered a hypothesis about the geomorphic origin of the Merritt Island-Cape Canaveral Sedimentary Complex (MICCSC) and the possibility of St. Johns River reversal some time in the Holocene. The work was published online Jan. 11th in and will be formally released in the April 2018 issue of Geomorphology. The .pdf […]
Aiden Woo, who completed his M.S. degree at UF with Dr. Mark Panning, has published the results of his work investigating the flexural isostasy of the Florida platform in Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Geosystems (G^3). Aiden has joined the UF Geomorphology Group to pursue his PhD.
We are happy to welcome Matt Conlin to the UF Geomorph group. Matt comes to us after completing his B.S. at Oregon State University, where he worked with our colleague Peter Ruggiero on various coastal geomorph projects in the Pacific Northwest, including Structure from Motion (SfM) mapping. Matt already has a diverse skill set which […]
We’re glad to welcome Han Byul “Aiden” Woo to the UF Geomorph group. Aiden is not stranger to UF, having completed an MS degree under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Panning (now at JPL). Aiden published the results of his MS in G^3 recently and will be expanding his knowledge base as he pursues a […]
Recent post-doc Patrick Limber has published the results of his work linking a pre-existing Coastal Evolution Model (CEM) to the sophisticated wave transformation model, SWAN. In this paper, Pat demonstrated how this coupled model can be used to simulate the growth of small protuberances in the lee of irregular bathymetry along sandy coasts. Pat has […]
We are happy to report that Hailey Johnson arrived in Gainesville to begin work on a PhD with our group. Hailey comes to us after working as a programmer at Microsoft, but has dual degrees in Computer Science and Earth Sciences from Duke. Hailey plans to work on t numerical modeling of coastal evolution. Welcome […]
On Friday, June 17, 2016, Christian Provancha successfully presented his MS thesis “Linking Latitudinal Variability of Western Atlantic Wave Climate to the North Atlantic Oscillation” to a full house in Room 265 of Williamson Hall. Christian did an outstanding job during the course of his M.S. degree and will certainly be missed.
A recent publication by our research group highlights the influence of an ebb-tidal delta on nearby beach behavior on the North Florida Atlantic coast. This project emerged as a collaborative effort from a combination of field surveys, led by Katherine Malone Keough during 2009-2010, and numerical modeling contributed by our colleague from UF Coastal Engineering, Maitane Olabarrieta.
Read more "New Pub: Adams Et Al., 2016, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms"
On October 24th, 2015, Pete Adams attended “SlingFest: Sediment from Mountains to Seas – A Celebration of Research and Service in Honour of Rudy L. Slingerland” at Penn State University. Adams’s talk compared UF Geomorphology’s recent work on Matanzas Inlet in Florida to a study by Slingerland (1983) in which he quantified correlations of inlet […]
During Oct. 18-20, Pete Adams attended a NAGT workshop organized by SERC (Science Education Resource Center) at Carleton College, which brought together approximately 20 faculty members from a range of universities (and representatives from Mathworks) to discuss how we implement MATLAB in our undergraduate and graduate programs. The workshop assembled numerous valuable resources and stimulated some […]
In a recent news feature — “Sea-level Rise Hits Home at NASA” — NASA addresses the sustainability of their coastal facilities with the ever increasing threat from sea-level rise. Several storms in the last decade near Cape Canaveral, FL have already caused $100 million worth of damage to Kennedy Space Center. Research by Drs. Peter […]
Read more "NASA Assesses Impact of Present and Future Sea-level Rise"
Recent M.S. graduate, Kat Wilson was the lead author on a study resulting from her M.S. work at the UF Geomorph lab, in collaboration with our colleagues at the USGS in St. Pete. In the paper, we present an updated Baysian model that incorporates the frequency and magnitude of natural and anthropogenic processes to successfully hindcast shoreline change and […]
Read more "New Pub: Wilson Et Al., 2015, Coastal Engineering"
On March 14, 2015, the UF Geomorph group participated in the UF Geological Sciences Department’s outreach event “Can You Dig It?” held at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. Our display showed the processes operating at tidal inlets and how water and sediment are exchanged between the open ocean and the back barrier […]
Approximately 6 months after completing a 5-year, monthly study of beach morphologic change at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, our group conducted a follow up survey to examine notable changes in the 2nd half of 2014. Participants included MS student Christian Provancha, PhD student Juan Paniagua, and PI Pete Adams. A YouTube movie of our GPS […]
An article by Craig Pittman about our research at Kennedy Space Center ran on the front page of the Tampa Bay Times today. The story explains the work our lab group has conducted at KSC and the steps that NASA is taking to protect the threatened launch infrastructure. Read the article here: http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/globalwarming/as-rising-sea-level-chomps-at-cape-canaveral-nasa-uses-nature-friendly/2211835
The CBS story about our research at NASA – Kennedy Space Center aired on CBS Saturday Morning news on Dec. 6, 2014. In the 2.5 minute segment, Pete Adams and John Jaeger discuss the research that the UF Geomorphology team has been conducting, with USGS colleagues, to quantify beach morphologic change along the Kennedy Space Center […]
On November 2-7, 2014, PhD student Juan Felipe Paniagua participated in the Sediment Experimentalist European Workshop, held at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The workshop was focused on discussing recent advances in experimental work, with an emphasis on data management and sharing. Particularly interesting was the community experiment in which participants used the Eurotank to reproduce two Gilbert-type […]
On Friday, Aug. 22, Pete Adams and John Jaeger (Co-PIs) on the Cape Canaveral Shoreline Change project traveled to NASA-Kennedy Space Center to take part in a story by CBS News on the launch infrastructure threatened by dune erosion and shoreline retreat. The piece has yet to air, but will likely be broadcast when the next […]
Read more "Press: Adams and Jaeger Interviewed for CBS Nightly News"
From August 12 to 21 PhD student Juan Felipe Paniagua Arroyave participated in the Summer Institute in Earth-surface Dynamics at the NSF-funded National Center of Earth-surface Dynamics. The topic for this year’s institute was ‘Complexity and predictability in depositional systems’, and consisted of a series of lectures, hands-on demonstrations and a community experiment in one of the delta tanks […]
On Friday, June 20, 2014, Kat Wilson successfully presented her MS thesis “Probablistic Forecasting of Morphodynamic Response to High-Wave Events At Fire Island, New York” to a standing-room-only Room 265. We’ll miss you Kat and best of luck in your new job with the USGS in St. Pete.
On Friday, May 23rd, 2014, a manuscript was published outlining a multi-component modeling system to understand storm impacts on the U.S. Pacific coast. The author list includes a diverse group of coastal researchers from the USGS, Deltares (NL), Oregon State, and the University of Florida (Geomorph group).
Some of our latest work on sea cliff retreat modeling has been published in the journal Geomorphology: The unsteady nature of sea cliff retreat due to mechanical abrasion, failure and comminution feedbacks Shaun W. Kline, Peter N. Adams, Patrick W. Limber Link to the Publisher Site: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169555X14001718 DOI: doi: 10.1016/j.geomorph.2014.03.037 Received date: 31 July 2013; Revised date: […]
Post-Doc, Pat Limber, has gotten some more of his research on cross-shore relief of rocky coasts published in JGR-Earth Surface: Unraveling the dynamics that scale cross-shore headland relief on rocky coastlines: Part 1. Model development Patrick W. Limber, A. Brad Murray, Peter N. Adams and Evan B. Goldstein Link to the Publisher Site: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JF002950/abstract Article first published […]
We held our (now to be annual) joint lab groups party on February 15th, bringing together the research groups of Dr. Carrie Reinhardt Adams (UF Environmental Horticulture) and Dr. Peter Adams (UF Geological Sciences). The food was terrific and the company was even better.
Today, our group conducted a series of tests at the UF Coastal Engineering Lab on SW 6th St. in Gainesville. With the help of the Lab Manager, we ran the newly refurbished wave tank (which may be the oldest in the country) for approximately 90 minutes, during which we generated waves, of periods 4 seconds […]
On Sept. 5, 2013, we were fortunate to host Giovanni Coco (Faculty Member at the Environmental Hydraulics Institute at the University of Cantabria, Spain) for our department seminar series. The announcement is found below: The Fall 2013 Geological Sciences Seminar Series presents a talk by Dr. Giovanni Coco, researcher at the Environmental Hydraulics Institute “IH […]
We’re happy to welcome Juan Felipe Paniagua Arroyave to the UF Geomorph group. Pani comes to us from Medellin, Columbia as a Fulbright scholar after recently completing his MS degree at EAFIT. Pani’s initial work here at UF will involve direct measurement of waves and currents at the Cape Canaveral shoals in a collaborative effort […]
Read more "Welcome Juan Felipe Paniagua Arroyave, new PhD student"
This week, Matt Willis arrived in Gainesville to begin work on a PhD with our group. Matt originates from Morehead City, NC, but has spent the past decade in Southern California, where he familiarized himself with the Pacific Ocean and earned an MS degree from Cal Poly Pomona. Welcome to UF Matt!
On Friday, May 24 2013, Shaun Kline successfully defended his PhD dissertation making the 2nd successful dissertation defense from our lab, within the past 3 months. Here is the announcement of his PhD defense: You are invited to the dissertation defense of PhD candidate Shaun Kline. Shaun will defend his dissertation entitled “Influence of Wave Energy Dissipation […]
On Friday, April 19th, Pete Adams gave a talk entitled “Florida’s Rising? Not so Fast!” to the joint meeting of the Southeastern Geological Society and Florida Association of Professional Geologists (SEGS-FAPG) at Davenport, Florida. The meeting was followed by a Saturday field trip to tour the CEMEX Davenport sand mine and to look for fulgurites […]
This Wednesday, (Apr. 17, 2013) from 11:45am-12:30pm, Pete Adams will present a talk at the Water, Wetlands, and Watersheds Seminar series in Room 100 of the Phelps Lab at the Howard T. Odum Center for Wetlands. Anyone interested is welcome. (http://www.cfw.ufl.edu/seminar_schedule_sp13.shtml)
Read more "Adams to present Water, Wetlands, and Watersheds Seminar"
On Apr. 4th, 2013, we were fortunate to host Nathaniel Plant (Research Oceanographer, USGS-St. Pete) this week for our department seminar series. The announcement is found below:This afternoon’s seminar is a presentation by Dr. Nathaniel G. Plant, Oceanographer with the United States Geological Survey in St. Petersburg, Florida. Dr. Plant will present“Probabilistic Prediction of Barrier Island Evolution […]
UF’s monthly differential GPS survey #65 of NASA-KSC intertidal beach was completed without incident. Participants were Kyle Sexton and Pete Adams. We even built a ramp down the ~4 ft. high scarped beach to successfully bring the mule and GPS trailer down from the dune line to the shore face. See the video here.
On Saturday, March 16, 2013, the UF Geomorph Group participated in the UF Dept. of Geological Sciences annual outreach activity, “Can You Dig It?”, held at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Our display demonstrated how tidal currents that flow through inlets at barrier islands can build substantial sedimentary features (ebb shoals and flood shoals). […]
On Friday, March 15, Jessica Lovering successfully defended her PhD dissertation. The announcement of her defense is found below:You are invited to the dissertation defense of PhD candidate Jessica L. Lovering. Jessica will defend her dissertation entitled “The Role of Marsh Platform Morphology in the Geomorphic Response of Tidal Inlet Systems to Sea Level Rise” […]
UF’s monthly differential GPS survey #64 of NASA-KSC intertidal beach was completed without incident. Participants were Kyle Sexton and Pete Adams. Photo shows how the washover fan has crossed the railroad tracks between LC-39A and LC-39B.
At the beginning of January 2013, the UF Geomorphology group welcomed a new post-doc, Patrick Limber, and new MS student, Kathleen Wilson. Pat comes to us after recently completing his PhD at Duke under the mentorship of Brad Murray, and will be working on an NSF-funded project to explore the coastal geomorphic consequences of wave […]
The UF Geomorph group presented 2 posters at this Fall’s AGU meeting in San Francisco during the week of Dec. 3-7. In addition, Pete Adams helped convene the (now annually-occurring) “Coastal Geomorphology and Morphodynamics” oral sessions, which have been growing in participation (see plot below).
On Oct. 18, 2012, we were fortunate to host Cheryl Hapke (Research Physical Scientist, USGS-St. Pete) this week for our department seminar series. The announcement is found below: You are invited to this week’s Fall 2012 Geological Sciences Seminar Series. This week’s seminar will be presented by Dr. Cheryl Hapke, Research Physical Scientist at the St. Petersburg Coastal and […]
On June 30, 2012 the following paper was published online: Young, A. P., R. T. Guza, P. N. Adams, W. C. O’Reilly, R. E. Flick, 2012, Cross-shore decay of cliff top ground motions driven by local ocean swell and infragravity waves, Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans, Vol. 117, C06029, 12 PP.,doi:10.1029/2012JC007908
On June 25, 2012 the following paper was published online: Silliman, B. R., J. van de Koppel, M. W. McCoy, J. Diller, G. Kasozi, K. Earl, P. N. Adams, Andrew R. Zimmerman, 2012, Degradation and resilience in Louisiana salt marshes after the BP–Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, v. 109, […]
Last Wednesday (Feb. 15, 2012), our group deployed 3 ADCP units on the sea floor of the inner shelf adjacent to our Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center field site. Shaun Kline accompanied divers and boat crew from the UF Coastal Engineering Lab (http://www.coastal.ufl.edu/laboratory.html) and IHA (http://www.ihamedical.com/environmental-services.html) to complete the installation. These instruments will measure wave fields […]
The UF Geomorphology group had two papers published in the December 2011 supplemental issue of the journal Climatic Change, entitled “Special Issue: California Second Assessment: New Climate Change Impact Studies and Implications for Adaptation”. One paper (Adams, Inman, and Lovering, 2011) examines the effect of wave direction change on longshore sediment transport within the southern […]
The UF Geomorph group will be presenting several posters and talks at the Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco next week. Look for us on Wednesday afternoon in poster sessions EP33A and OS33A, and Friday morning in the Coastal Geomorphology oral session (EP51D). Click on the screen-shot below to view the complete listing of presentations […]
Last week, Shaun Kline and Pete Adams visited COAS at Oregon State in Corvallis to attend the 2011 Argus Workshop organized by Rob Holman and his colleagues. We presented work related to the imagery data we’ve been collecting at Kennedy Space Center with Nathaniel Plant and USGS colleagues. An excellent meeting which included discussions with […]
On Mar. 24, 2011, we were fortunate to host Mark Dickson (Faculty Member at the University of Auckland, New Zealand), who has been visiting UF for two months, for our department seminar series. The announcement is found below: Please join us for this week’s seminar presentation tomorrow afternoon (Thursday March 24, 2011) by Dr. Mark […]
Last week, Pete Adams was interviewed by a reporter for the Washington Post on the evidence of intensification of ocean wave climate. The published article can be found online at this site:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/11/AR2010121102805.html
Read more "Washington Post story on Wave Climate Intensification"
On Nov. 4, 2010, we were fortunate to host Peter Ruggiero (Associate Professor, Oregon State) for our department seminar series. The announcement is found below:Please join us for the seminar presentation this afternoon (Thursday, November 4th, 2010) by Dr. Peter Ruggiero, Assistant Professor and Senior Researcher in Coastal Geomorphology, Coastal Hazards, and Nearshore Processes in […]
Here is a link to the UF press release on the story of karst-driven isostatic uplift of the Florida carbonate platform, presented in this month’s issue of Geology (Adams et al., 2010): http://news.ufl.edu/2010/06/01/florida-rise/. And the link to the UF News video release on the subject: http://news.ufl.edu/2010/06/01/florida-rising/ And the link to the short article published in Discovery News: http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/florida-limestone-swiss-cheese.htm
On March 26th, 2010, members of our lab were fortunate enough to get a bird’s eye view of NASA-Kennedy Space Center and CCAFS from a helicopter piloted by NASA airmen. We took off from the Shuttle Landing Facility and toured the entire coastal reach and wetlands from above for approximately 45 minutes. This gave […]
On Oct. 1, 2009, we were fortunate to host Abby Sallenger (Oceanographer, USGS-St. Pete) this week for our department seminar series. The announcement is found below: REMINDER: USGS Oceanographer Dr. Asbury Sallenger will be speaking today at 4 p.m. in 202 Williamson Hall. The title of his presentation is “Barrier-island failure modes triggered by Hurricane […]
