Coastlines of the world are as diverse as any geological setting onEarth. Beaches and Coasts is an exciting and unique new textbookthat provides an exhaustive treatment of the world's differentcoasts and details the highly varied processes that have shapedthem. Having conducted research on coastlines throughout the world,the authors draw on a wealth of experience that broadens thecontent of chapters and provides for numerous and varied examples.The book furnishes a basic understanding of the tectonic framework,hydrographic regime, climatic setting, and geologic materials thatdetermine the morphology of a coast. Individual chapters aredevoted to major coastal environments such as barriers, tidalinlets, marshes, estuaries, lagoons, deltas, glaciated coasts,rocky coasts and many others. Beaches and Coasts provides the necessary content forteaching a broad coastal geology course. Though designed forintroductory students, its comprehensive treatment of coastaltopics will make it appropriate for many upper level courses. Exciting and unique textbook that provides an exhaustivetreatment of the world's different coasts and details the highlyvaried processes that have shaped them. The authors draw on a wealth of experience that broadens thecontent of chapters and provides for numerous and variedexamples. Provides a basic understanding of the tectonic framework,hydrographic regime, climatic setting, and geologic materials thatdetermine the morphology of a coast. Individual chapters are devoted to major coastal environmentssuch as barriers, tidal inlets, marshes, estuaries, lagoons,deltas, glaciated coasts, rocky coasts, and many others. Provides comprehensive content for teaching a broad coastalgeology course for both introductory and upper level courses.

Discusses why California's Pacific Coast looks and works the way it does, offering discussions of tectonics, the formation of waves, rain and wind, changing climates and sea levels, human impacts, and coastal erosion, with color photographs, diagrams, and maps.

Our beaches are eroding, sinking, washing out right under our houses, hotels, bridges; vacation dreamlands become nightmare scenes of futile revetments, fills, groins, what have you—all thrown up in a frantic defense against the natural system. The romantic desire to live on the seashore is in doomed conflict with an age-old pattern of beach migration. Yet it need not be so. Conservationist Wallace Kaufman teams up with marine geologist Orrin H. Pilkey Jr., in an evaluation of America's beaches from coast to coast, giving sound advice on how to judge a safe beach development from a dangerous one and how to live at the shore sensibly and safely.

Take this book to the beach; it will open up a whole new world. Illustrated throughout with color photographs, maps, and graphics, it explores one of the planet’s most dynamic environments—from tourist beaches to Arctic beaches strewn with ice chunks to steaming hot tropical shores. The World’s Beaches tells how beaches work, explains why they vary so much, and shows how dramatic changes can occur on them in a matter of hours. It discusses tides, waves, and wind; the patterns of dunes, washover fans, and wrack lines; and the shape of berms, bars, shell lags, cusps, ripples, and blisters. What is the world’s longest beach? Why do some beaches sing when you walk on them? Why do some have dark rings on their surface and tiny holes scattered far and wide? This fascinating, comprehensive guide also considers the future of beaches, and explains how extensively people have affected them—from coastal engineering to pollution, oil spills, and rising sea levels.

The coasts of today's American South feature luxury condominiums, resorts, and gated communities, yet just a century ago, a surprising amount of beachfront property in the Chesapeake, along the Carolina shores, and around the Gulf of Mexico was owned and populated by African Americans. Blending social and environmental history, Andrew W. Kahrl tells the story of African American–owned beaches in the twentieth century. By reconstructing African American life along the coast, Kahrl demonstrates just how important these properties were for African American communities and leisure, as well as for economic empowerment, especially during the era of the Jim Crow South. However, in the wake of the civil rights movement and amid the growing prosperity of the Sunbelt, many African Americans fell victim to effective campaigns to dispossess black landowners of their properties and beaches. Kahrl makes a signal contribution to our understanding of African American landowners and real-estate developers, as well as the development of coastal capitalism along the southern seaboard, tying the creation of overdeveloped, unsustainable coastlines to the unmaking of black communities and cultures along the shore. The result is a skillful appraisal of the ambiguous legacy of racial progress in the Sunbelt.

Volume on coastal management aimed at consulting engineers, research scientists, developers and students.

This book should be of interest to geologists; biologists; environmentalists; ecologists; engineers; lecturers and students in related subjects; libraries.