Coastal Processes and Landforms Flashcards
Which country has the longest coastline?
- Canada, tops number 2 by almost 5x! (much of it is undeveloped and in the Arctic)
- Followed by Indonesia (number 2), Greenland, Russia, Philippines etc.
How much of the worlds and North America’s population lives on the coast?
- 2.2 billion globally
- 75 percent NA
How much coast does BC have?
- 22000km
Dynamic environment of the coastal/littoral zone
- Interaction btwn terrestrial, atmospheric, and marine systems (solid, liquid, and gas processes)
- Energy from winds, waves, and tides (very dynamic)
- Rapid responses btwn process and form, continually changing
Spatial and temporal variations of coastal/littoral zone
- Extensive zones spanning km’s from wave break to back shore (include inlets, fjords etc.)
- Forms and processes change w/ season, storms, tide range, sea-levels
Coastal landforms change short-term with?
- Seasons
- Storms
- Tides
- Land characteristics
- Human alterations
What are some examples of human alteration of coastal landforms on the short-term scale?
- Offshore: groins, sea walls
- Onshore: deforestation, etc.
Coast landforms change longer-term with?
- Tectonics, subsidence, uplift
- Sea level change, transgression, regression
- Delta progradation
- Glaciation
- Land changes (river i/p, volcanic eruptions
What percent of the worlds coastline is sandy?
- 34 percent
- popular for tourism, development, ecologically distinct
- Ever-changing, responsive to coastal processes
What kind of coastline is highly responsive to coastal processes?
- Sandy
- Ever-changing
What makes for a beach?
- Competent wind/wave/tidal processes and sediment supply and ‘accommodation space’
Allochthonous
- Externally sourced
- 92 percent globally
- Mostly from rivers, aeolian, glacial, colluvial w/ some offshore sources
Autochthonous
- Locally derived
- 8 percent globally
- Biogenic sediments, carbonate rich beaches, local shoreline erosion
Coastal system landforms and zones
- Different parts of the littoral zone exhibit diff wave and current processes to create a suite of related landforms
- eg longshore currents: shore parallel current caused by wave action in the nearshore region w/in the breaker zone
Schematic of longshore currents and beach
- Offshore, nearshore, shore, coast
- Beach composed of nearshore and shore
- Shore composed of foreshore (low to high tide) and back shore (where tide doesn’t reach)
- Breakers in nearhore
- Longshore bar, longshore trough, wave-cut bench, beachface, berm, notch, wave-cut cliff
Where are beaches wider? Narrower?
- Further from erosional zone = wider, closer = narrower
- Broad, can also get dune systems from wind blowing seds back towards land
Greenwich dunes, PEI
- Sed being limited by strong wind regime
- Fastest eroding shorelines in Canada (1-3m/yr)
- Isostatic collapse/ sea rising 30cm/100yrs
- Huge dune systems from strong wind regime liberating sediment
Human made rock berms
- Meant to protect coast (e.g. highway in Haida Gwaii)
- Reflect energy back but can combine w/ incoming waves to generate positive feedback
- Feed back amplifies undercutting and erosion
- Also stronger rip and longshore currents
- Normal function: wave energy used in swash and sed transport
What is another/maybe better way of protecting human infrastructure on the coast?
- Build wider beaches so natural function of swash and sed transport can happen
- But building groins to do this starves beaches further down of sed
- Therefore more and more groins get built
Time-space paradigms in coastal study
- Geological w/ Net shoreline
- Large-scale (engineering) w/ large size beach cycles, major storm erosion
- Events w/ seasonal beach cycles
- Instantaneous w/ ripple migration
Geological time-space paradigm
- Geological: net shoreline, net shoreline movement
- on Millenia-century scale
- w/ climate change, tectonics, sea level, sediment supply
Large-scale (engineering) time-space paradigm
- Large-scale (engineering): Net shoreline movement (horiz), large size beach cycles, major storm erosion, beach position
- on century-decade-year scale
- w/ Sed supply, wave-climate cycles, annual wave climate tidal regime
Events time-space paradigm
- Events: beach position, seasonal beach cycles, beach migration beach face
- on yr-season-months-days scale
- w/ annual wave climate tidal regime, seasonal wave climate, tide cycles storm events, wave trains
Instantaneous time-space paradigm
- Instantaneous: beach migration, beach face, ripple migration, ripples
- on day-hour-seconds scale
- w/ wave trains, tide, waves