Coastal transgressive dunefields are on the march in South Australia – retreating inland from an angry ocean at an alarming rate.
Coastal transgressive dunefields are on the march in South Australia – retreating inland from an angry ocean at an alarming rate. Yet while this occurs in plain sight, communities are largely oblivious to long-term coastal changes, and Flinders University’s Professor Patrick Hesp is concerned this is all happening in a geological blink of the eye.
Measurements taken by Flinders University’s Beaches and Dunes Systems (BEADS) Laboratory of the Younghusband Peninsula – Australia’s longest coastal dunefield, stretching 190km from the Murray River mouth to Kingston South East – have identified accelerated dune movement due to coastal erosion, triggering rapid evolution of a new dune phase.
“This is an extraordinary rate of development and, if the shoreline erosion trend continues to expand north and south as it appears to be doing, it will dramatically change the National Park dune system – and may also significantly impact the Coorong Lagoon as dune sands invade it,” says Professor Hesp, Strategic Professor of Coastal Studies at Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering.
Read more at: Flanders University
Photo P Hesp (Photo Credit: Flinders University)
