Why Sand Is Disappearing

Why Sand Is Disappearing - NYTimes.com:
Today, however, 75 to 90 percent of the world’s natural sand beaches are disappearing, due partly to rising sea levels and increased storm action, but also to massive erosion caused by the human development of shores. Many low-lying barrier islands are already submerged. 

Yet the extent of this global crisis is obscured because so-called beach nourishment projects attempt hold sand in place and repair the damage by the time summer people return, creating the illusion of an eternal shore.
Before next summer, endless lines of dump trucks will have filled in bare spots and restored dunes.
Virginia Beach alone has been restored more than 50 times. 

In recent decades, East Coast barrier islands have used 23 million loads of sand, much of it mined inland and the rest dredged from coastal waters — a practice that disturbs the sea bottom, creating turbidity that kills coral beds and damages spawning grounds, which hurts inshore fisheries.
The sand and gravel business is now growing faster than the economy as a whole. 

In the United States, the market for mined sand has become a billion-dollar annual business, growing at 10 percent a year since 2008. 

Interior mining operations use huge machines working in open pits to dig down under the earth’s surface to get sand left behind by ancient glaciers. 

But as demand has risen — and the damming of rivers has held back the flow of sand from mountainous interiors — natural sources of sand have been shrinking.
One might think that desert sand would be a ready substitute, but its grains are finer and smoother; they don’t adhere to rougher sand grains, and tend to blow away. 

As a result, the desert state of Dubai brings sand for its beaches all the way from Australia.