A beach ridge plain is a progradational strand plain composed of a series of parallel beach ridges. The ridges are commonly closely spaced, the bottoms of the interridge swales commonly being at about the normal elevation of the back of the beach before the prograding ridge was formed in front of it (Stapor, 1975).
Changes in the trend commonly affect sandy shorelines. These cause diagonal, curving, or end truncation of the beach plain, with a new progradational series forming parallel with the changed shoreline.
The ridge may originate immediately back of the active beach as a flood-level ridge commonly of the coarser beach materials, or it may form as an eolian accumulation caught in the vegetation immediately back of the beach proper. Many beach ridges are water-laid below and eolian above, or there may be alternations of the two types, as in the plain at the mouth of Sabine Lake (bay), Texas. Where excess amounts of sand are blown to it from the beach, the ridge may become...
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References
Otvos, E. G., and Price, W. A., 1979. Problems of chenier genesis and terminology—an overview, Marine Geology 31, 251–263.
Stapor, F. W., 1975. Holocene beach ridge plain development, northwest Florida, Zeitschr. Geomorphologie 22, 116–144.
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© 1982 Hutchinson Ross Publishing Company
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Price, W.A. (1982). Beach ridge plain . In: Beaches and Coastal Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30843-1_61
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30843-1_61
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