Returning to Jekyll we went beach exploring and received a bit of a shock. It’s one thing to read about barrier island like Jekyll continually being changed slowly moving south with prevailing winds and currents. It’s another to see it over a short period of time.
Walking along Driftwood Beach on the north end of Jekyll found the tree we’d noticed and written a post Sole Survivor showing a tree now on the beach with one root back into the sand cliff getting some fresh water.
Feb 2010 Sole Survivor Tree with one root still reaching the sand cliff.
The tree was still there but more of the vertical roots were exposed and the horizontal root that once had stuck into the sand cliff was exposed and I paced off 30′ of erosion that had taken place.
Nov 2011 The sand cliff is now 30' behind the tree.
A few days later we found another unique tree to watch. This one appears to have started growing long before the sand dune started since it’s main root structure seems to be at the current beach level. It will serve as a new marker for watching the north end of the island change.
The receeding beach exposed another unique tree to track.
Along Jekyll’s southeast coast evidence that the beach changes may have been due to a storm, possibly storm surge from hurricane Irene, was evident. In the spring, the now missing portion of the acess ramp touched the sand a comfortable distance from the high tide line. The bottom of the ramp was slowly being covered by dune sand. The lower portion of the access ramp was gone. The high tide line had moved into the island at least 50′ and lapped around the ramp pilings. A raw sand cliff face hinted at the furry of the storm that had washed away 50′ of sand dune. It will be interesting to see how the dune recovers as rain, storm waves, and wind wear away the cliff.
At Glory Beach the access ramp and part of the dune has disappeared.
