How to read a Florida Gulf Coast beach : a guide to shadow dunes, ghost forests, and other telltale clues from an ever-changing coast / Tonya Clayton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clayton, Tonya D.

Series:

Southern gateways guide.

Southern gateways guide

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Coastal ecology--Florida--Gulf Coast--Guidebooks.

Coastal ecology.

Gulf Coast (Fla.)--Guidebooks.

Gulf Coast (Fla.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (227 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Come explore the geology of Florida's Gulf Coast beaches, from a bird's-eye view down to a crab's-eye view. You'll journey from Panhandle sugar-sand beaches to southwestern shell beaches, taking a fresh look at the ever-changing landscape. With Tonya Clayton as your guide, you'll learn how to recognize the stories and read the clues of these dynamic shores, reshaped daily by winds, waves, and sometimes bulldozers or dump trucks.This dynamic tour begins with a broad description of Florida's Gulf Coast, roaming from popular Perdido Key in the northwest to remote Cape Sable in the south. You'

Contents:

Cover; CONTENTS; INTRODUCTION; 1. FLORIDA'S GULF COAST: A REGION TO SAVOR; A Feast of Beaches; The Northwest Barrier Chain: Big Dunes and Sugar Sands; The Big Bend Coast: Marsh, Marsh, Everywhere; The West-Central Barrier Chain: World-Class Diversity; The Southwest Mangrove Coast: Forest Mazes and Shell Beaches; Movers and Shapers; Tectonic Setting; Sand Supply; Waves and Tides; Local Geological History; Climate and Weather; Sea Level; 2. READING THE LANDSCAPE: A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW; Getting to Know the Neighborhood; Reading the Landscape; A Dynamic Equilibrium

Recarved Shorelines: Direct Human Influence The Great Coastal Conveyer Belt: Longshore Transport; Of Passes and Prisms; Hot Dogs, Drumsticks, and Other Telling Shapes: Waves vs. Tides; ""The Sea Has Swept Entirely across the Island"": Hurricanes and Other Major Storms; 3. SHORELINES IN MOTION; Changes; Signs of a Moving Shoreline; Signs of an Advancing (Moving Seaward) Shoreline; Signs of a Retreating (Moving Landward) Shoreline; Barrier-Island Life Cycles; An Island Is Born; Island Demise; Islands in Midlife; Islands High and Low

Life in a Warming World: Shoreline Migration since the Great Ice Age 4. DUNES; Watching the Winds of Change; Recipe for a Dune; Wind Shadows, Green Anchors, and Other Dune Features; When Wave Meets Dune; Coastal Dune Lakes: Only in the Panhandle; 5. BEACHES; Beach or No Beach?; Waves; How Tall, How Wide?; Spilling and Ripping; Tides, Etc.; On the Beach; Rhythms of the Beach; Withdrawals and Deposits; El Niño and La Niña; The Bermuda High; Sea Level; Beach Life Lived Large; 6. EPHEMERA; Wind Flow; Raindrops; Ripple Marks; Rill Marks; Airholes; A selection of color plates

Marks of the Swash Zone Footprints; Lebensspuren; Lightning Tubes; Life in the Wrack Line; Black Gold; Beach Life: A Benthic Trio; 7. SAND; Mineral Grains: Quartz and Other Long-Timers; Sands of Life: The Biogenic Fraction; Size, Sorting, and Color; Specialty Sands; Beach Life: Meiofauna; 8. BEACH REMODELING; Hard Structures; Seawalls and Kin; Breakwaters; Groins and Jetties; Sand Placement; Artificial Dunes; Beach Scraping; Beach Tilling and Beach Raking; Innovative Technologies; Seaside Evolution; 9. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES; Beach Happenings: How Much? How Big? How Long? How Fast?

Disturbance Scale; Rate; Sandy Beach Ecosystems; EPILOGUE: READ YOUR BEACHES; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; BEACH WORDS; SUGGESTED READINGS; INDEX;

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

979-88-908859-8-2

0-8078-8253-4

OCLC:

782879907