On Monday October 9, 2023, the Biscarrosse CoastSnap station was installed on the south beach access by teams from the Observatoire de la Côte Nouvelle-Aquitaine (OCNA), the town council and the Communauté de Communes des Grands Lacs.
This is the fourth CoastSnap station in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, after Lacanau, Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Capbreton.
How can you become involved in coastal monitoring and contribute to a better understanding of this environment?
Why not combine business with pleasure on your next trip to the coast? Passing by a site equipped with a CoastSnap observation station, citizens are invited to take a photo of the beach and share it via a dedicated form, by email or from an application. The photo will then be added to a citizens’ photo library of the coastline. By analyzing it, it will be possible to better understand the evolution of the coastline on different time scales.
What happens to the photo?
Once the photo has been shared, it joins a bank of citizen photos that are compared with each other and then analyzed by scientists using various image processing algorithms developed by researchers from the international CoastSnap network and the Observatoire de la côte de Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
Thanks to repeated shots of the beach from the same fixed point, it is possible to track changes over time in the position of the coastline, variations in beach level, vegetation, and so on.
This information contributes to a better understanding of the evolution of these sites, as well as to the efficient and sustainable management of our beaches.
