Large-scale patterns in hurricane-driven shoreline change

Lazarus, Eli Dalton, Ashton, Andrew D. and Murray, A. Brad 2012. Large-scale patterns in hurricane-driven shoreline change. Sharma, A. Surjalal, Bunde, Armin, Dimri, Vijay P. and Baker, Daniel N., eds. Extreme Events and Natural Hazards: The Complexity Perspective, Geophysical Monograph Series, vol. 196. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union, pp. 127-138. (10.1029/2011GM001074)

Preview

PDF Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

The effects of storm events on cross-shore beach profiles have been the subject of concerted examination by nearshore researchers for decades. Because these investigations typically span relatively short (less than a kilometer) shoreline reaches, alongshore patterns of storm-driven shoreline change at multikilometer scales remain poorly understood. Here we measure shoreline position from seven airborne lidar surveys of coastal topography, spanning 12 years (1996–2008), along a continuous ∼80 km stretch of the northern North Carolina Outer Banks, United States. Two of the lidar surveys were flown in the wakes of Hurricane Bonnie (1998) and Hurricane Floyd (1999), allowing a rare window into storm-related alongshore coastline changes at large scales. In power spectra of shoreline change variance and in calculations of plan view shoreline curvature, we find evidence of transient behaviors at relatively small alongshore scales (less than a kilometer) and an interesting combination of both transient and cumulative shoreline change patterns at larger scales (1–10 km). Large-scale plan view shoreline undulations grow in amplitude during the storm intervals we examined, possibly forced by a large-scale morphodynamic instability. Long-term (decadal) shoreline adjustments, however, trend in the opposite direction, with an overall diffusion or smoothing of shoreline shape at multiple-kilometer scales, probably due to gradients in alongshore sediment transport. Although storms can significantly reshape the coastline across a wide range of scales, those changes do not necessarily accumulate to patterns of long-term change.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GC Oceanography
Uncontrolled Keywords:	coastal morphodynamics; shoreline change; hurricanes; power law; sediment transport; wavelets
Publisher:	American Geophysical Union
ISBN:	9780875904863
ISSN:	0065-8448
Related URLs:	Publisher
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2023 20:43
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/37508

Citation Data

Cited 2 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item