Why is the World Running Out of Sand? – ABC Radio National

"Sand Rainbow," Dredger depositing sand and water just offshore at Mermaid Beach, Gold Coast. Australia. Part of large scale beach nourishment project (by Steve Austin CC BY-ND 2.0 via Flickr).

After water, sand is the most-exploited natural resource in the world, but its use is largely ungoverned, meaning we are consuming it faster than it can be replaced by geological processes that take hundreds of thousands of years. Making sand from ore could solve the looming crisis…

This small Virginia island could be underwater before the next century – NPR

Tangier Island is seen in Accomack County, Va., on March 20, 2017. (courtesy of Chesapeake Bay Program, photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program with aerial support by Southwings CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

Tangier Island — off the mainland coast of Virginia — is one of the last inhabited islands in the Chesapeake Bay. Before colonial settlers arrived in the 1700s, Indigenous people likely traveled to the island in the summer to take advantage of the abundant fish and crabs…Many descendants of the original settlers — with surnames like Crockett, Parks and Thomas — have remained to this day. The isolation has allowed the development of a unique accent, one that some residents describe as a mix between “Southern” and “Elizabethan” English….

First sea-level records for coastal community protection – the European Space Agency

South Georgia Island, 2018 (courtesy of European Space Agency: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO via Flickr).

Satellites have revolutionised our ability to measure sea level but their data becomes less reliable near coasts…To address this critical gap, ESA’s Climate Change Initiative Sea Level Project research team has reprocessed almost two decades of satellite data to establish a pioneering network of ‘virtual’ coastal stations. These stations now provide, for the first time, reliable and consistent sea-level measurements along coastlines…