The Impact of Storms Past and Future

WHOI scientist Jeff Donnelly takes a sediment core in the marsh behind Cape Cod’s Menauhant Beach, to show participants in the 2004 Ocean Science Journalism program a layer of sand deposited there during a hurricane in 1815. A member of WHOI’s Geology and Geophysics Department, Donnelly uses such evidence to study how past changes in climate have altered coastal systems and to improve our ability to predict how coastal terrain will respond to future changes. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)