While doing my never-ending research on barrier islands, I was recently drawn to the highly functional science term “sediment budget.” Being a wordologist, I’m both intrigued and thoroughly sold on the term. I like its physical and fiscal insinuations, as we spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to essentially balance the sediment budget on LBI.

The sediment budget is a somewhat conjectural assessment of the overall amount of sand, gravel, clay, shell matter and detritus material that makes up a barrier island.