Juxtaposed beach ridges and foredunes within a ridge plain - Wonga Beach, northeast Australia

Forsyth, Anthony J., Nott, Jonathan, Bateman, Mark D., and Beaman, Robin J. (2012) Juxtaposed beach ridges and foredunes within a ridge plain - Wonga Beach, northeast Australia. Marine Geology, 307-310. pp. 111-116.

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Abstract

Reports describing aeolian foredunes and wave-derived beach ridges juxtaposed within a single coastal barrier complex are rare, perhaps because morphological similarities make the two ridge types difficult to differentiate. This study of an approximately 4500 year-old sand ridge plain in northeast Queensland, Australia using landform morphology, sedimentology and luminescence chronology suggests that ridge plain development here has been interrupted along part of the sequence by localised alterations in coastal sedimentation. A switch from coarse to fine-grained sand supply along one part of the beach has caused the development of prograding foredunes in the northeastern sector of the sequence over the past 700 years. Contemporaneously, coarser textured beach ridges have continued to form behind the remainder of the beach. The result is a 'complex barrier' where a single ridge plain contains both foredunes developed through high frequency, low intensity events and beach ridges developed through high intensity, low frequency events associated with intense tropical cyclones.

Item ID: 22959
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 0025-3227
Keywords: tropical cyclone record, beach ridge, foredune, storm deposit, complex barrier
Date Deposited: 15 Aug 2012 05:42
FoR Codes: 04 EARTH SCIENCES > 0406 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience > 040601 Geomorphology and Regolith and Landscape Evolution @ 50%
04 EARTH SCIENCES > 0406 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience > 040605 Palaeoclimatology @ 50%
SEO Codes: 97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970104 Expanding Knowledge in the Earth Sciences @ 100%
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