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Cumulative versus transient shoreline change: dependencies on temporal and spatial scale

Cumulative versus transient shoreline change: dependencies on temporal and spatial scale
Cumulative versus transient shoreline change: dependencies on temporal and spatial scale
Using shoreline change measurements of two oceanside reaches of the North Carolina Outer Banks, USA, we explore an existing premise that shoreline change on a sandy coast is a self-affine signal, wherein patterns of change are scale invariant. Wavelet analysis confirms that the mean variance (spectral power) of shoreline change can be approximated by a power law at alongshore scales from tens of meters up to ?4–8 km. However, the possibility of a power law relationship does not necessarily reveal a unifying, scale-free, dominant process, and deviations from power law scaling at scales of kilometers to tens of kilometers may suggest further insights into shoreline change processes. Specifically, the maximum of the variance in shoreline change and the scale at which that maximum occurs both increase when shoreline change is measured over longer time scales. This suggests a temporal control on the magnitude of change possible at a given spatial scale and, by extension, that aggregation of shoreline change over time is an important component of large-scale shifts in shoreline position. We also find a consistent difference in variance magnitude between the two survey reaches at large spatial scales, which may be related to differences in oceanographic forcing conditions or may involve hydrodynamic interactions with nearshore geologic bathymetric structures. Overall, the findings suggest that shoreline change at small spatial scales (less than kilometers) does not represent a peak in the shoreline change signal and that change at larger spatial scales dominates the signal, emphasizing the need for studies that target long-term, large-scale shoreline change.
0148-0227
1-10
Lazarus, Eli
642a3cdb-0d25-48b1-8ab8-8d1d72daca6e
Ashton, Andrew
f58f4026-38d1-4e19-ad7d-87090fe3d722
Murray, A. Brad
dd93e4dd-ed6c-4cf5-89c6-e1f85cf8f61f
Tebbens, Sarah
0acba045-892c-4360-b005-48933ba83460
Burroughs, Stephen
cdbef037-2bb5-435b-9541-385a9cdd3249
Lazarus, Eli
642a3cdb-0d25-48b1-8ab8-8d1d72daca6e
Ashton, Andrew
f58f4026-38d1-4e19-ad7d-87090fe3d722
Murray, A. Brad
dd93e4dd-ed6c-4cf5-89c6-e1f85cf8f61f
Tebbens, Sarah
0acba045-892c-4360-b005-48933ba83460
Burroughs, Stephen
cdbef037-2bb5-435b-9541-385a9cdd3249

Lazarus, Eli, Ashton, Andrew, Murray, A. Brad, Tebbens, Sarah and Burroughs, Stephen (2011) Cumulative versus transient shoreline change: dependencies on temporal and spatial scale. Journal of Geophysical Research, 116 (F2), 1-10. (doi:10.1029/2010JF001835).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Using shoreline change measurements of two oceanside reaches of the North Carolina Outer Banks, USA, we explore an existing premise that shoreline change on a sandy coast is a self-affine signal, wherein patterns of change are scale invariant. Wavelet analysis confirms that the mean variance (spectral power) of shoreline change can be approximated by a power law at alongshore scales from tens of meters up to ?4–8 km. However, the possibility of a power law relationship does not necessarily reveal a unifying, scale-free, dominant process, and deviations from power law scaling at scales of kilometers to tens of kilometers may suggest further insights into shoreline change processes. Specifically, the maximum of the variance in shoreline change and the scale at which that maximum occurs both increase when shoreline change is measured over longer time scales. This suggests a temporal control on the magnitude of change possible at a given spatial scale and, by extension, that aggregation of shoreline change over time is an important component of large-scale shifts in shoreline position. We also find a consistent difference in variance magnitude between the two survey reaches at large spatial scales, which may be related to differences in oceanographic forcing conditions or may involve hydrodynamic interactions with nearshore geologic bathymetric structures. Overall, the findings suggest that shoreline change at small spatial scales (less than kilometers) does not represent a peak in the shoreline change signal and that change at larger spatial scales dominates the signal, emphasizing the need for studies that target long-term, large-scale shoreline change.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 8 March 2011
Published date: 21 May 2011
Organisations: Earth Surface Dynamics

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 400722
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/400722
ISSN: 0148-0227
PURE UUID: 9331cbdf-88fa-44b5-a3a6-cd7367249a06
ORCID for Eli Lazarus: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2404-9661

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Date deposited: 23 Sep 2016 14:24
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:57

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Contributors

Author: Eli Lazarus ORCID iD
Author: Andrew Ashton
Author: A. Brad Murray
Author: Sarah Tebbens
Author: Stephen Burroughs

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