Coastal communities are increasingly at risk of flooding and associated erosion threatening homes, economies, and ways of life. We are evaluating the viability of using an offshore barrier reef system to protect the beach from erosion, assessing the effectiveness of the system, and determining its potential impact on the surrounding environment and communities. This work will be conducted in Biscayne Bay, Florida, and will provide the Village of Key Biscayne the information needed to reduce erosion and improve long-term reef health.
Why We Care
The Village of Key Biscayne faces chronic shoreline erosion along its 1.2-mile Atlantic coastline, losing approximately 12,000 cubic yards of sand annually. This erosion directly threatens critical infrastructure — including an electrical substation; stormwater systems; water and sewer utilities; and Crandon Boulevard, the Village’s only evacuation route — as well as approximately $5 billion in adjacent property values and the dunes that provide the primary storm surge buffer for oceanside neighborhoods.
Traditional beach renourishment has been the primary management response since 1969, with seven major renourishment projects placing a total of 837,300 cubic yards of sand. Renourishment intervals have shortened from seven to less than three years with costs per cubic yard more than triple what they were in the 1970s. This approach is becoming unsustainable, and the community’s risks of wave-driven erosion have never been higher.
This local challenge mirrors a broader regional crisis. More than half of Florida’s 825 miles of beaches are classified as critically eroded, and the urban coastline stretching from Miami-Dade to Broward County is among the most economically valuable and storm-vulnerable in the United States. Hybrid reef restoration projects that combine engineered infrastructure with natural infrastructure approaches may serve as a cost-effective coastal protection solution.
This project explores the viability of a hybrid reef restoration to reduce wave energy and thereby reduce shoreline erosion risks. The project site is adjacent to the Village of Key Biscayne, but the results and approaches are relevant to the larger Florida coast.
What We Are Doing
We are developing a scientifically validated and implementable framework for hybrid offshore artificial reef systems that reduce shoreline erosion, enhance coastal resilience, and provide significant ecological benefits for the Village of Key Biscayne and the broader southeast Florida coast. Our work is organized around four core objectives:
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- Quantify coastal processes and primary drivers of shoreline change along the 1.2-mile Key Biscayne Atlantic shoreline.
- Identify and rank optimal offshore reef deployment locations using integrated numerical modeling and habitat assessment.
- Develop preliminary engineering designs and make and test prototype reef structures.
- Evaluate the performance and propagation strategies of heat-tolerant coral species in non-reef nearshore environments.
Benefits of Our Work
This project is a critical first step in implementing a more sustainable and cost-effective solution to beach erosion. Without the potential to reduce erosion rates, the Village will need to continue performing frequent beach nourishments, which are costly and carry their own environmental impacts. Project outputs include preliminary engineering designs, validated hydrodynamic and morphological models, demonstrated coral growth data, and a regulatory and permitting roadmap to support future full-scale deployment. Anticipated beneficiaries include the residents and critical infrastructure of Key Biscayne, Miami-Dade County coastal managers, and other southeast Florida communities seeking sustainable, natural infrastructure alternatives to repeated beach renourishment for shoreline stabilization.
This Community Directed Spending project is led by Steven Williamson (Village Manager, Village of Key Biscayne), in collaboration with Roland Samimy and Colleen Bank from the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida.