Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 9.11
Sediment distribution pattern for the extant tidal flats rimming the extensive Holocene coastal (chenier) plain of Jiangsu
Province, China (After Wang and Ke
1997
)
2-3 m, which are conceived to be generated like swash
bars/ridges on the beach (Reineck and Cheng
1978
;
Yang et al.
2005
). The sandy lower intertidal flat is
landward continuous either with a gentle sand-mud
middle intertidal flat and a mud upper intertidal flat for
the accretional open coast like that on the central west
coast of Taiwan (Reineck and Cheng
1978
), or with a
narrow inner slope like that on the coast of the
Parksville Bay in the Strait of Georgia, Canada (Hale
and McCann
1982
), or with the inner swash bar/ridge
and the inner muddy flat behind the bar/ridge like that
on the southwest coast of Korea. The inner swash bar/
ridge can be initially formed at the middle intertidal
ground, migrates landward intermittently driven by
seasonal storm events, and is finally welded to the
coast as a part of the strand plain (Lee et al.
1994
; Yang
et al.
2005, 2008a
; Ryu et al.
2008
). The intertidal surf-
icial sediment distribution has generally a landward-
fining trend for the sandy open-coast intertidal flats
without inner swash bar, similar to that of muddy open-
coast tidal flats. However, a reverse trend, i.e., a land-
ward-coarsening tendency except the inner muddy flat,
is founded for those developing the inner swash bar
composed of the coarsest sediment, which is highly
mimic to the shoreface (Yang et al.
2005
).
Tidal-channel networks are generally not much
developed or event absent on the open-coast tidal flats
in comparison with their delicate development on the
