With the support of the Julia R. Brown Education and Research Award, PhD student Ashton Domi attended the American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2025 Fall Meeting in New Orleans and presented his research on sandy beach groundwater interactions. In this post, Ashton conveys how this conference sparked fresh ideas—from river‑sediment analogues to landslide modeling—that he plans to integrate into his Scripps field experiment, while also highlighting the worldwide urgency of coastal erosion. More broadly, the AGU conference reinforced the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and left Ashton motivated to advance coastal‑resilience research on a global scale.
Attending the AGU 2025 conference was an eye-opening and awe-inspiring experience. I was originally drawn to AGU by a peer who described the conference as a “buffet” of abstracts—a vast landscape of information that allows a researcher to digest a year’s worth of progress in just a few days. Having struggled to find fresh inspiration through online papers alone, I attended with the goal of attracting new ideas to my project and connecting with the broader coastal community.
On Wednesday, December 17th, I presented my poster, “Observations of swash-groundwater exchange on an accreting beach,” as part of the Coastal Geomorphology and Morphodynamics III session. In collaboration with scientists Britt Raubenheimer and Steve Elgar from Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography and alongside my advisors Adam Young and Mark Merrifield, the work detailed a 2025 field experiment conducted right here at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
My research examines the relationships between groundwater and morphological change of a sandy beach. One of my key findings—that sandy beach accretion consistently occurs landward of the water table outcrop—sparked unexpectedly helpful dialogue with other scientists. I learned that “less is more” in a poster session; by focusing on a singular, strong finding rather than exhaustive analysis, I created space for insightful feedback and suggestions from peers that I am eager to integrate into my next phase of work.
Beyond my own presentation, I was struck by how my niche field of groundwater dynamics in porous media expands far beyond the beach. Seeing how groundwater properties are coupled with landslides, floodplains, and river systems offered a new lens through which to view my own data. For instance, a study on riverine sediment layering provided a potential explanation for a grain-sorting processes I’ve observed at Scripps, while a CFD-DEM model of landslide failure convinced me that such modeling of seepage forces could be a transformative tool for my study of groundwater-sand interaction.
The most striking part of this experience was the realization of my work’s outward benefit. I was surprised to see how much my incorporation of groundwater inspired other coastal scientists who hadn’t yet considered its significance. Simultaneously, I was humbled by the scale of the global threat to coastlines. Seeing the magnified erosional processes in the Mississippi Delta and the North Carolina Outer Banks reinforced the urgency of the coastal research we do at SIO. I return from AGU not only more confident in my research but also with a deeper understanding of the global effort required to adapt to our changing climate.
Blog content and images provided by Ashton Domi – thank you!
Nick Cirrito also presented his research at the (AGU) 2025 Fall Meeting in New Orleans. Read about Nick’s experience here.