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High-angle wave instability and emergent shoreline shapes: 2. Wave climate analysis and comparisons to nature

Publication ,  Journal Article
Ashton, AD; Murray, AB
Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
December 24, 2006

Recent research has revealed that the plan view evolution of a coast due to gradients in alongshore sediment transport is highly dependant upon the angles at which waves approach the shore, giving rise to an instability in shoreline shape that can generate different types of naturally occurring coastal landforms, including capes, flying spits, and alongshore sand waves. This instability merely requires that alongshore sediment flux is maximized for a given deepwater wave angle, a maximum that occurs between 35° and 50° for several common alongshore sediment transport formulae. Here we introduce metrics that sum over records of wave data to quantify the long-term stability of wave climates and to investigate how wave climates change along a coast. For Long Point, a flying spit on the north shore of Lake Erie, Canada, wave climate metrics suggest that unstable waves have shaped the spit and, furthermore, that smaller-scale alongshore sand waves occur along the spit at the same locations where the wave climate becomes unstable. A shoreline aligned along the trend of the Carolina Capes, United States, would be dominated by high-angle waves; numerical simulations driven by a comparable wave climate develop a similarly shaped cuspate coast. Local wave climates along these simulated capes and the Carolina Capes show similar trends: Shoreline reorientation and shadowing from neighboring capes causes most of the coast to experience locally stable wave climates despite regional instability. Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface

DOI

EISSN

2169-9011

Publication Date

December 24, 2006

Volume

111

Issue

4

Related Subject Headings

  • 41 Environmental sciences
  • 37 Earth sciences
  • 04 Earth Sciences
 

Citation

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ICMJE
MLA
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Ashton, A. D., & Murray, A. B. (2006). High-angle wave instability and emergent shoreline shapes: 2. Wave climate analysis and comparisons to nature. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 111(4). https://doi.org/10.1029/2005JF000423
Ashton, A. D., and A. B. Murray. “High-angle wave instability and emergent shoreline shapes: 2. Wave climate analysis and comparisons to nature.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 111, no. 4 (December 24, 2006). https://doi.org/10.1029/2005JF000423.
Ashton AD, Murray AB. High-angle wave instability and emergent shoreline shapes: 2. Wave climate analysis and comparisons to nature. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. 2006 Dec 24;111(4).
Ashton, A. D., and A. B. Murray. “High-angle wave instability and emergent shoreline shapes: 2. Wave climate analysis and comparisons to nature.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, vol. 111, no. 4, Dec. 2006. Scopus, doi:10.1029/2005JF000423.
Ashton AD, Murray AB. High-angle wave instability and emergent shoreline shapes: 2. Wave climate analysis and comparisons to nature. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. 2006 Dec 24;111(4).

Published In

Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface

DOI

EISSN

2169-9011

Publication Date

December 24, 2006

Volume

111

Issue

4

Related Subject Headings

  • 41 Environmental sciences
  • 37 Earth sciences
  • 04 Earth Sciences