Tidal sand ridges and shoal-retreat massifs |
| |
| Authors: | Donald JP Swift |
| |
| Institution: | Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratories, Miami, Fla. U.S.A. |
| |
| Abstract: | In 1963, Off defined a bedform type which he described as rhythmic linear sand bodies caused by tidal currents. He figured twelve examples from around the world. Since then, the morphology and dynamics of sand transport in one of these areas, the tidal shelf seas around Great Britain, have undergone intensive study. The tidal sand ridges emerge as anomalies, in that they do not fit into the sequence of morphologic provinces which characterize the major sediment transport paths.It is suggested here that the ridge fields are analogous to the shoal-retreat massifs of the Middle Atlantic Bight in that they have been inherited from a nearshore regime during the course of the Holocene transgression. Shoal-retreat massifs are low, broad, shelf-transverse sand bodies which mark the retreat paths of coastal depocenters associated with littoral drift convergences. Two main types of shoal-retreat massifs in the Middle Atlantic Bight are: (1) estuarine shoal-retreat massifs; and (2) cape shoal-retreat massifs.Two similar classes of shoal-retreat massifs may develop in tidal shelf seas, but the mechanism is somewhat different. Class-1 tidal massifs are tidal ridge fields whose ridges were hydraulically packaged in an estuarine environment. If, upon transgression, they find themselves in a broad tidal bight which continues to funnel tidal flow, the ridges may survive for long distances out into the bight. The ridge fields of the Southern Bight of the North Sea may have undergone such an evolution.Class-2 tidal massifs occur off promontories in tidal seas that are swept by the edge waves generated by amphidromic tidal systems. Here the debris of shoreface erosion tends to be stored as shoreface-connected, tide-maintained ridges. Such ridges are also pre-adapted to survive with modification for long distances out on the associated shelf, as the water column deepens during a marine transgression. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
