The global impact of sand mining on beaches and dunes – Ocean & Coastal Management

USACE project Sand Replenishment 5.5 mile strech of Anna Maria Island, FL (by Carol VanHook CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr).

Beaches and coastal dunes have always supplied sand for a wide range of uses, and initially the extracted volumes were limited to buckets, wheelbarrows, or small pickup truck loads. However, starting in the late twentieth century, and thanks to urban development, especially for coastal tourism, coastal and river sand has been extracted at an accelerated pace, and on a much grander scale…

Grains of Sand: Too Much and Never Enough – EOS Magazine

Sand dunes in Kernel - Sydney, Australia (by Bea Pierce CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

Sand is a foundational element of our cities, our homes, our landscapes and seascapes. How we will interact with the material in the future, however, is less certain…

“The use of sand is now faced with two major challenges,” said Xiaoyang Zhong, a doctoral student in environmental science at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “One is that it has caused enormous consequences in the environment,” he explained. “The second challenge is that easily usable sand resources are running out in many regions…”

Vanishing Sands: How Sand Mining is Stripping Away Earth’s Beaches by Orrin Pilkey, et al – Duke | Nicholas School of the Environment

Cover art: Forest City, Johor, Malaysia, 2017. (Photograph by Sim Chi Yin, courtesy of Duke University Press)

A new book from Duke University Press, “Vanishing Sands: Losing Beaches to Mining,” casts light on the shadowy world of sand mining through case studies that illuminate its disastrous impacts and a concluding chapter that proposes common-sense solutions.

Because of the tradition of viewing beaches as public land, people have historically thought of beach sand as a free and limitless resource, Pilkey and his co-authors explain in their preface to “Vanishing Sands…”

Why beach sand mining is so dangerous – Times of India

Coastal Sand Mining Awareness Campaign poster created by Awaaz Foundation and BNHS for the UN Convention on Biodiversity Conference in Hyderabad, India 2012 (uploaded by Sumaira Abdulali, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia)

Beach sand mining has been illegal since 1991 when the Coastal Regulation Zone Rules were first notified thirty years ago. Although illegal mining on beaches has continued nevertheless, the scale has been comparatively lesser than in rivers, where it has devasted entire swathes of land and water. Major Indian rivers like the Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari and Kaveri face existential threat…

Illegal sand mining eroding Morocco’s coastline and tourism

Tourism is essential to Morocco’s economy, and its beautiful beaches are a vital part of the attraction for visitors. In an ironic Catch-22 situation, however, meeting the demands of this industry is indirectly destroying the very coastline that tourists are coming to enjoy.