LONG BEACH, N.Y. — It is February, but the smell of Christmas wafts up from the shores of Long Beach these days.

Thousands of Christmas trees, stripped of lights and ornaments, have been arranged along the beach here as part of an unusual plan to restore the protective dunes washed away by Hurricane Sandy. The trees are supposed to catch sand blown by the wind, until gradually the dunes grow up around them.

Long Beach, one of the localities in the New York region most devastated by the storm, is a thin ribbon of land between Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean. The storm washed away about half a million cubic yards of sand, officials said, leaving residents dangerously exposed to even modestly inclement weather.

“Some areas lost three to five feet in elevation on the beach,” said Jim LaCarrubba, the director of public works here. “We’ve become that much more vulnerable to storms.”