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Southwest Western Australia Region

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Australian Coastal Systems

Part of the book series: Coastal Research Library ((COASTALRL,volume 32))

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Abstract

The southwest coast of Western Australia extends north from Cape Leeuwin for 916 km to the Murchison River mouth at Kalbarri and includes the Perth coast and Rottnest Island. In doing so it extends the length of the low relief Perth Basin and into the southern higher relief Carnarvon Basin. The climate is Mediterranean with rainfall decreasing northward. The coast has several small- to moderate-sized rivers and streams most of which drain to closed estuaries. Coastal sediments are carbonate-rich derived from the shelf and seagrass meadows. The southwest swell dominates the deepwater wave climate, while breaker wave energy is attenuated and refracted by the near continuous nearshore limestone platform containing shore-parallel calcarenite reefs, with the limestone also extending inland as lithified Pleistocene barriers. The extensive beach systems range from sheltered to exposed and contain numerous sandy forelands induced by wave refraction over the reefs. The barriers, depending on wave energy and shoreline orientation, range from regressive to transgressive, with strong southerly winds responsible for extensive north-trending transgressive dunes. This chapter describes the coastal processes, sediments and sediment transport and the beaches, barrier and sediment transport within each sediment compartment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Andrew D. Short

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  1. Andrew D. Short
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Short, A.D. (2020). Southwest Western Australia Region. In: Australian Coastal Systems. Coastal Research Library, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14294-0_32

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