Beaches Unit (4.5 Pts) Section
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T. James Noyes, El Camino College Beaches Unit (Topic 6A) – page 1 Name: Beaches Unit (4.5 pts) Section: Beaches and Shorelines are always changing Waves are slowly and inexorably altering the shoreline, breaking down material in some places and carrying it to other places. Each wave has a small effect, but waves keep coming minute after minute, day after day, year after year. Significant changes in the shoreline (tens of feet) can occur within a human lifetime. For example, old maps of Encinitas (located along the coastal cliffs by Interstate 5 on the way down to San Diego) show that it has lost about a city block of land to the sea in the last century. In some places along the coast of Alaska, the shoreline has eroded 900 meters in 50 years, an average of about 18 meters (60 feet) per year! Beach Sediments Beach sediments are composed of whatever sediments are available locally: sand, cobbles, gravel, coral fragments, shell fragments, and so on. (In fact, tiny plastic sediments are making up a larger and larger component of our beaches.) Beach sediments are characterized by (1) the kind of material that they are made out of, (2) their size, (3) their shape, and (4) their sorting. (Well sorted sediments all have about the same size and shape, while poorly sorted sediments are a jumbled mix of sediments with many different sizes and shapes. Lithogenous sediments (“rock sediments”) are produced from the weathering of the rock of the land. Rocks are broken down into pieces (sediments) by the physical impact of water, wind, and other rocks; by chemicals dissolved in water; and repeated heating and cooling. (Some parts of the rock expand more or less than other parts, causing fractures, or water in cracks may freeze and expand, widening cracks.) After weathering breaks the rock of the land into sediments, the sediments are then eroded, carried or transported by wind or water. Most sediments on our beaches are carried to the shoreline by the water flowing down rivers and streams, and then pushed along the shoreline by waves. (Of course, some sediments on our beaches are produced at the shoreline itself by the weathering and erosion of the rock of the shoreline.) 1. How are well-sorted sediments different from poorly-sorted sediments? 2. What is weathering? T. James Noyes, El Camino College Beaches Unit (Topic 6A) – page 2 3. What is erosion? 4. What carry sediments from farther inland to the shoreline? 5. What “weather” the coast (push the shoreline back) and also push sediments down the coast? Sediment Transportation (Erosion) “High energy” water (like fast-flowing rivers and strong waves) can lift and carry more sediments and larger, heavier sediments than “low energy” water. Once the water calms, the larger, heavier sediments are dropped (deposited), but smaller, lighter sediment continue their journey, which separates or “sorts” the sediments. In other words, smaller, lighter sediments can move even when water motion is not very strong and larger, heavier sediments get left behind. The smallest sediments (like mud, clay, and silt) are lighter and thus picked up more easily by moving water and sink very slowly. Thus, smaller, lighter sediments are easily carried and only settle in very calm water. Sand is also a fairly small sediment, but not as small and light as smaller sediments like mud. It drops pretty quickly to the bottom due to its greater weight. However, sand is light enough to be picked up again. Sand sinks and is picked up again and again so long as the water continues to move, as happens in a river or when waves break at the coast. As sediments travel, they bump into one another and the bottom, chipping away at their surfaces. Typically this makes their jagged (angular, sharp) edges more rounded, though impacts can split a sediment, creating sharp surfaces as well. Large rocks at the bottom of rivers are smoothed by sand washing over them again and again, like using sand paper to round the edge of a piece of wood. The more time sediments spend in the water, especially in high energy conditions, and the farther they travel, the more rounded the sediments tend to become. Some minerals in rocks are very resistant to being broken down. Rivers and waves are just not strong enough to have much of an effect on quartz once it reaches the size of sand; quartz just does not get smaller. Thus, beach sand is made up by a lot of quartz. (It has the same chemical formula as glass and is used to make glass.) The same is true of man-made materials like plastic: Once they reach the size of sand, waves have little ability to break them down further. T. James Noyes, El Camino College Beaches Unit (Topic 6A) – page 3 6. What carry more sediments, big waves or small waves? 7. Which sediments are carried more easily by waves, large sediments or smaller ones? 8. Which is larger, sand or mud? 9. Which is carried more easily and in larger quantities by rivers, sand or mud? 10. As sediments travel, how do their (i) size and (ii) shape change? 11. True or false? “Given enough time, sand grains exposed to waves will get smaller and smaller until they become mud.” Winter and Summertime Beaches The shape of a beach is primarily affected by wave conditions and tide levels. Waves can both push sand onto the beach from the ocean and drag sand back into the ocean. Typically, a mound or hill of sand (the berm) builds up along the shoreline. At high tide, this is the only part of the beach that is above water, so the beach slope appears quite steep. As waves push into the shoreline, they erode a flat area in front of the berm called the low tide terrace. At low tide, this flat area is exposed, and the beach appears less steeply sloped. During summer, waves tend to be smaller and have a longer period, because there are fewer, weaker nearby storms and the stronger storms are farther away (in the other hemisphere where it is winter). Since wave crests arrive at the shoreline less frequently, the water of the breaking waves has time to soak into the beach sand and can work its way back to the ocean through the sand. Thus, during summer waves push sand from the nearby ocean floor up onto the beach. The sand then remains on the beach. T. James Noyes, El Camino College Beaches Unit (Topic 6A) – page 4 During winter, wave crests crash against the beach so frequently that the sand becomes saturated with water, and more water flows back into the ocean over the sand (and under the incoming waves, hence the term undertow), often dragging more sand back into the ocean than the waves push up the beach. Thus, wintertime beaches often have less sand, which sometimes exposes the larger rocks beneath the sand. The sand, though, is NOT permanently removed from the beach: The sand offshore will be pushed up and out of the ocean again during the spring and summer, only to be removed again and stored offshore during the fall and winter. The sand removed from the beach piles up offshore, sometimes forming underwater hills called sand bars. By causing the water to get shallow very quickly, sand bars can cause waves to break quickly, producing the plunging breakers beloved by surfers. However, sand bars can also help create one of the greatest dangers at recreational beaches, rip currents. 12. When is there more sand on beaches, during the summer or the winter? 13. What pushes sand onto the beaches during this season? Where does the sand come from? 14. When is there less sand on beaches, during the summer or the winter? 15. What pulls sand off beaches during this season? Where does the sand go? Rip Currents Rip currents (also called “rip tides”) are fast-flowing streams of water rushing away from the shoreline. Rip currents may be nearly invisible, particularly when they are starting to form, but they typically pick up sediments, making the water brown and muddy. Rip currents also disrupt the incoming waves, making them break differently than the crests to either side of the rip current. If a rip current is dragging you out into the ocean, do not try and fight it. It is too strong, so you will waste your energy, increasing the likelihood that you will drown. Instead, swim out of the rip current by swimming up or down the coast (parallel to the shoreline). Once you are out of the rip current, you can safely return to the beach. Rip currents can form in several ways, some of which are not well understood. All involve waves breaking more strongly in some places than others along the shoreline. The extra water rushing up the beach at these locations has to flow back into the ocean, and it finds it easier to T. James Noyes, El Camino College Beaches Unit (Topic 6A) – page 5 flow back into the ocean where the waves are breaking less fiercely, resulting in a stronger offshore flow at these locations. The best documented cases of rip currents involve holes in a sand bar, because these rip currents persist longer and occur in the same places again and again, allowing them to be studied. Waves break over the sand bar on either side of the hole, causing water to surge over the sand bar. The easiest place for it to flow back into the ocean is where the water is deepest: the hole in the sand bar.