Coastal evolution

About this book

The shoreline is a rapidly changing interface between the land and the sea. Much of the world's population lives in the coastal zone, and coasts are under threat from a variety of natural and anthropogenic impacts, such as climate or sea-level change. Understanding the natural dynamics of a shoreline is essential in order to assess these ongoing and future impacts. This book is a result of an international initiative to study how coastlines change and how they have evolved over the last few thousand years. Coastal Evolution introduces some of the latest concepts in coastal morphodynamics, recognising that coasts develop through co-adjustment of process and form. Particular types of coast, such as deltas, estuaries, reefs, lagoons and polar coasts, are examined in detail, with conceptual models developed on the basis of well-studied examples. The book is a contribution to the International Geological Correlation Programme Project 274, 'Coastal Evolution in the Quaternary'. Coastal Evolution is written with a broad audience in mind: undergraduates who are studying coastal geomorphology, geologists who are mapping coastal sedimentary sequences, and environmental scientists, engineers, planners and coastal managers who need to understand the natural processes of change that occur on shorelines.