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12.5: Depositional Coastal Landforms

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    10336
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    Depositional Coastal Landforms or Features

    Spits are ridges of sand projected from land into the bay (Figure 12.23).
    A bay-mouth bar is a sandbar that stretches across a bay, separating it from the ocean (Figure 12.24).

    Barrier islands are ridges of sand islands that run parallel to the coast (Figure 12.25). In locations where inlets occur cutting across bay-mouth bars or barrier islands, tidal deltas can accumulate sediments on both ends of an inlet. Ebb tidal deltas form as the outgoing tidal current erode and move and deposit sand on the seaward side of an inlet. Flood-tide deltas form where incoming tidal currents carry sediments eroded from the ocean-beach side of a barrier-island inlet and deposit them in the lagoon or bay side of an inlet.

    Spits: Rockaway Spit (NY) and Sandy Hook (NJ), NY) Baymouth Bar at Bolinas Lagoon Barrier islands along Cape Cod's south shore, Massachusetts
    Figure 12.23. Spits: Rockaway Spit (on Long Island, NY) and Sandy Hook Spit (New Jersey project into outer New York Harbor and Raritan Bay. Figure 12.24. Bay-mouth bar: Bolinas lagoon has a baymouth bar. The bar is composed of sand eroded and transported along shore from the Point Reyes Peninsula (in the distance). Figure 12.25. Nauset-Monomoy barrier islands along Cape Cod's south shore, Massachusetts, with tidal deltas visible in the shallow waters on the landward side of the inlets.

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