Beach sediments are derived from a wide variety of sources, including cliff erosion, rivers, glaciers, volcanoes, coral reefs, sea shells, the Holocene rise in sea level, and the cannibalization of ancient coastal deposits. The nature of the source and the type and intensity of the erosional, transportational, and depositional processes in a coastal region determine the type of material that makes up a beach. In turn, the characteristics of the sediments strongly influence beach morphology and the processes that operate on it (Trenhaile 1997).
Grain Size
The grain size of pebbles and other large clastic material can be measured with callipers, and sieves are used for sand and other coarse beach sediments. A number of techniques are used to determine the size of finer sediments including Coulter Counters, pipettes, hydrometers, optical settling instruments, and electron microscopes. The grain size can be expressed using the Wentworth scale, which is based on classes that are separated...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Carter RWG (1988) Coastal environments. Academic, London
Clifton HE (1969) Beach lamination: nature and origin. Mar Geol 7:553–559
Fieller NRJ, Gilbertson DD, Olbricht W (1984) A new method for environmental analysis of particle size distribution data from shoreline sediments. Nature 311:648–651
McLaren P (1981) An interpretation of trends in grain size measures. J Sediment Petrol 51:611–624
Powers MC (1953) A new roundness scale for sedimentary particles. J Sediment Petrol 23:117–119
Sleath JFA (1984) Sea bed mechanics. Wiley, Chichester
Steidtmann JR (1982) Size-density sorting of sand-size spheres during deposition from bedload transport and implications concerning hydraulic equivalence. Sedimentology 29:877–883
Sutherland RA, Lee C-T (1994) Application of the log-hyperbolic distribution to Hawaiian beach sands. J Coast Res 10:251–262
Thomas MC, Wiltshire RJ, Williams AT (1995) The use of Fourier descriptors in the classification of particle shape. Sedimentology 42:635–645
Trenhaile AS (1997) Coastal dynamics and landforms. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Trenhaile AS, Van der Nol LV, LaValle PD (1996) Grain roundness and beach sorting. J Coast Res 12:1017–1023
Winkelmolen AM (1971) Rollability, a functional shape property of sand grains. J Sediment Petrol 41:703–714
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Trenhaile, A.S. (2019). Beach Sediment Characteristics. In: Finkl, C.W., Makowski, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Coastal Science. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93806-6_41
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93806-6_41
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93805-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93806-6
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences