Return to search

Cuspate shoreline morphology

Large beach cusps with wavelengths O(200m), sometimes termed mega-cusps, were measured along 18km of the Southern Monterey Bay coastline from October 2004 to April 2005 to investigate the cuspate shoreline response to rip current systems. Monterey Bay is a unique location for the study of rip current systems, which has with well defined rips that are present all year long, a large dune erosional rate, and incident wave energy that is primarily shore-normal with a large alongshore gradient. Contours of the coastline were extrapolated from the surveys using an all-terrain vehicle equipped with Kinematic GPS. Cusp spacing was inferred from the data using a zero up-cross technique and found to be O(230m) for low wave energy beaches and O(250m) for high wave energy beaches. Migration rates of the cusps were found to be 1-5m/day owing to the quasi-uniform erosion of the dune system. Cusps were found to be semi-permanent features with length scales dependant upon the local wave climate.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:nps.edu/oai:calhoun.nps.edu:10945/1924
Date06 1900
CreatorsMcWilliams, Brandon K.
ContributorsThornton, Edward, Stanton, Timothy, Naval Postgraduate School, Oceanography
PublisherMonterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Source SetsNaval Postgraduate School
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Formatxiv, 55 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, application/pdf
RightsApproved for public release, distribution unlimited

Page generated in 0.0024 seconds