Coastal Environments and Global Change

Plate 1 Relationship between spatial and temporal scales of coastal systems. Sluggish and labile systems are those that respond relatively slow and fast, respectively.

(Source: Adapted from Cowell and Thom 1994. Imagery © 2013 Terrametrics. Map data © 2013 Google.)

Plate 2 Natural examples of enclosed water bodies with cuspate features and segmented water bodies. (a) Laguna Val’karkynmangkak, Russia; (b) inset of (a); and (c) Lagoa Dos Patos, Brazil. The results of a numerical simulation of the formation of cuspate features and segmented water bodies are shown in the right panels.

(Source: Ashton et al. 2009. Reproduced with permission of the Geological Society of America.)

Plate 3 Deriving sea-level history from salt-marsh stratigraphy. (a) Stratigraphy of a salt marsh in southern New Zealand. The marsh developed in the past half millennium on a substrate of late Holocene intertidal sands. The sands were deposited in the middle and late Holocene when sea level was slightly higher than present. MLWS, mean low water spring. (b) Since about AD 1900, accumulation has been very rapid as a consequence of the accommodation space provided by the sharp sea-level acceleration ...