Moving forward, it seems obvious that more research is necessary to solve the controversy that is beach nourishment. Presently, there is knowledge on both sides of the argument that may or may not be true. By researching the impacts of nourishment projects on invertebrates, fish populations, geomorphology, socioeconomics and other concerns, our society can work toward a more complete understanding of what these projects truly mean and whether or not they are appropriate. This is essentially what is referred to as the coproduction of knowledge and society. The idea of coproduction is that knowledge and society are integral parts in the advancement of one another, and neither can move forward without the other also moving forward. Supporters for and against beach nourishment support their personal preferences with different pieces of knowledge, but in order to progress from a controversy, a decision that benefits the majority of the stakeholders is required. This may require compromises from some or all interested stakeholders. Every beach is unique, and the prefered solution amongst stakeholders may be different in each case. Ultimately, policy makers will have to examine scientific evidence of stakeholder claims, while considering society's best interests, in order to determine future beach nourishment policies.
IssueCrawler
The Issue Crawler is a cluster map generator which is able to locate and visualize issue networks of organizations related to certain issue from seeds (5 or more so websites). It consists of crawlers, databases, analysis engines and visualization modules. The software then "crawls" through each seed provided and finds hyperlinks to other websites. The cluster map below started with the seeds asbpa.org, psds.wcu.edu, beachapedia.org, pierandsurf.com and saw.usace.army.mil. You can click each buble below to see the statistic about the node. The cluster map is dominated with .gov domain, leading into .mil which all related to the USACE (one of the keyplayer) websites and environmental organizations. Some of the websites was linked inside the keyplayers pages. We find it interesting that it lists youtube and bobber.info (child friendly website owned by USACE). Both of portals may be used to spread information to a wider audience. However the map does not list prominent scientific and peer-reviewed journal portals, especially the one that being used as references in this website.
Google Trends
Google Trends provides tools to gauge search behaviors over time. It shows the data of how frequently particular search terms are being entered across various regions of the world in various languages. As with Ngram, we can see from the graph above that “beach nourishment” is more popular than “beach replenishment” as a Google search entry. The government and journalists often use the term nourishment in their publications, which likely shapes this trend. The graphic above also reveals that the peak popularity of both term’s usage was during March 2004, followed by a steady decline until recently. The peak was following the previous events of Hurricane Isabel, which occurred in September 2003, which might have led to discussion of beach nourishment project possibilities on March 2004. Further research on Google Trends also shows interest by sub-region in the United States for searching term “beach nourishment” in four states: North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and California, while there is not enough data for “beach replenishment”.