This multiyear project is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Solid Earth and Natural Hazards Program. The goal is to apply advanced terrain mapping technology to improve our understanding of storm hazards and erosion along sandy barrier island coasts. The Bureau is using its airborne topographic lidar instrument to acquire detailed terrain models of beaches and dunes along the southeast Texas coast. With these models we can accurately track the change in position of the shoreline and develop sediment-volume budgets for the beach/dune system. Spatial variation in the sand volume and elevation and shape of the beach/dune system is a primary control on the amount of damage to landward structures during storms. This project is mapping these variations and developing new parameters to describe them.