Robert Dolan (marine geologist)

Robert "Bob" Dolan, Ph.D., (April 5, 1929 – April 24, 2016) was Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia (UVA) and was a pioneer in the field of coastal geology and coastal geomorphology. After serving in the U.S. Navy, Dolan earned his B.S. from Southern Oregon College in 1955, his M.S. from Oregon State University in 1958, and his Ph.D. from the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University in 1965.

Dolan conducted his Ph.D. research on North Carolina’s Outer Banks in the early 1960s. As part of his dissertation, Dolan set up instrumentation on a pier at Nags Head, North Carolina, to measure storm impacts. Three weeks into this project, the infamous Ash Wednesday storm of 1962 slammed into the eastern seaboard. An account of Dolan’s experience living on the front row of this storm and the impact it had on his life and career can be found in “Ribbon of Sand: The Amazing Convergence of the Ocean and the Outer Banks” by Alexander and Lazell (2000) and “Edge of the Sea” by Sackett.

Dolan took his first and only faculty position at UVA in 1965 where he worked for nearly 50 years. During his tenure at UVA, he helped to found the Department of Environmental Sciences in the early 1970s - the first in the nation to offer bachelor’s to Ph.D. degrees. In the years following, Bob worked with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on many projects. The majority of his research and publications focused on the dynamics of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. His work with Harry Lins titled, “The Outer Banks of North Carolina” (U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1177-B) is in its fourth printing. During the 1970s, Bob worked to save the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and Hatteras seashore and wrote a landmark paper on the negative impacts of maintaining sand dunes on beaches. This research ultimately led to a reversal of NPS policy along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to allow the dunes, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, to erode naturally. He also recommended mining sand from Cape Point at Cape Hatteras to use for nourishing the beach in front of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse.

Dolan published more than 200 articles and studies, including cover stories in the journals Science and Scientific American. While the list of his work in the field of coastal geomorphology and geology is quite extensive, Dr. Dolan will be remembered as an ambassador and an expert who, among other things, enabled competing interests to develop mutually satisfactory solutions in the debate regarding construction of the Oregon Inlet, North Carolina jetties.

Dolan also worked as a liaison scientist for the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and lived overseas for two stints during the mid-1980s and mid-1990s assessing ONR coastal and marine research and engineering activities.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dolan played a major role in advancing the field of shoreline change research with his UVA colleagues Bruce Hayden and Suzette May Kimball among others. He was among the first to develop a shoreline digitizing system when the technology was in its infancy. He then spent many years compiling two large shoreline datasets – COASTS and CEIS – that were used by research groups, coastal land managers, policy makers and local homeowners to assess the vulnerability of coastal properties and use as a land-use decision-making tool. Dolan and his research team ultimately used those data to provide technical support for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s shoreline mapping program in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A number of publications resulted from this work and provided guidelines on shoreline change analyses for many research groups and government/coastal management agencies (including the USGS’s Digital Shoreline Analysis System, DSAS).

Later, Dolan pursued his passion for quantifying northeast storms where he developed the “Dolan/Davis” classification scheme for rating the intensity of northeast storms with his colleague Dr. Robert Davis. He also worked on a multitude of coastal projects as a researcher, consultant, and scientific expert in legal cases ranging from projects in Dubai to NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility.

While at UVA, Dolan received an award for Significant Contributions to the Science Program from the Department of the Interior (1987), the Outstanding Alumnus Award from Southern Oregon College and UVA’s Distinguished Professor award (1991). He was also noted for his scientific “flexibility” - contributing literature on topics including “Sinking Cities” and sea-level rise, the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke Island, the origin of Jockey’s Ridge, NC and human impacts along the Colorado River. He served as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Coastal Research and was a member of Sigma Xi, American Shore and Beach Association and the American Geophysical Union.

Dr. Robert Dolan died on 24 April 2016 in Charlottesville, Virginia, at age 87.