Fundamentally, coastal bluff recession is driven by wave attack at the bluff toe. However, the water level fluctuations that characterize the Laurentian Great Lakes, combined with sparse nearshore bathymetric data, make it difficult to quantify the frequency at which these bluff toes are exposed to wave attack. This project will use a novel GIS tool – CoastalAnalyst - to assimilate deepwater wave hindcasts from the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ Wave Information Study, historical beach profiles captured from imagery-derived DEMs, LiDAR-derived bathymetric data from the Canadian Hydrographic Service, and historical water level gauge data from Goderich Harbour in order to estimate the frequency at which bluff toes in southeastern Lake Huron are exposed to wave attack between 2006 and 2024. The resulting metric – wave impact hours – will then be correlated to measured rates of bluff toe retreat during this period to assess its usefulness as a predictor of coastal bluff recession.
