Lake, river, and ocean beaches are America's top vacation choices. We take almost two billion trips to the beach each year and spend billions of dollars in beach communities. Inadequate protection and overuse of beaches can lead to their alteration or destruction. However, some simple actions can be taken to protect these valuable systems. In other words, a beach is the sandy, pebbly, or rocky shore of a body of water.
Beaches vary widely in physical type and characteristics.
When most of us think of a beach, we picture sandy ocean beaches with waves crashing, wind blowing, and seagulls flying overhead. But beaches in the United States also include urban seashores, estuarine and lagoonal beaches, and freshwater lakefronts and riverfronts. Ocean beaches vary along our coasts. The Atlantic coast, for example, includes a system of barrier beaches influenced by high-energy wave action. The coasts of the Gulf of Mexico are calmer, with less wave action and more submerged vegetation like sea grasses.