Douglas L. Inman

On the Tectonic and Morphologic Classification of Coasts

In terms of the gross first-order effects of plate tectonics, there appear to be three major classes of coasts and several subclasses, depending upon their position relative to the moving plates of the tectosphere: (1) collision coasts, that is, those on the collision edge of continents and island arcs; (2) trailing-edge coasts, that is, those on the trailing edge or noncollision side of a continent; and, (3) marginal sea coasts protected by island arcs. The trailing-edge coasts range in form from the tectonically new coasts facing beginning separation centers to the morphologically active coasts bordering the debris plains formed from the erosion products of the continents. The good coherence between certain morphologic and tectonic features of coasts was used as a guide in formulating a purely morphologic classification with tectonic implications. The morphologic classification is defined simply in terms of the width of the continental shelf and the relief of the adjacent land forms: (1) mountainous coasts; (2) narrow-shelf hilly, and plains coasts; and (3) wide-shelf hilly, and plains coasts.

Observations of rapidly flowing granular-fluid materials

The rapid shearing of a mixture of cohesionless glass spheres and air or water was studied in an annular, parallel-plate shear cell designed after Savage (1978). Two types of flow were observed. In the first type of flow the entire mass of the granular material was mobilized. At high shear rates the shear and normal stresses were found to be quadratically dependent upon the mean shear rate (at constant volume concentration), in general agreement with the observations of Bagnold (1954) and Savage & Sayed (1984), and the ‘kinetic’ theory of Jenkins & Savage (1983). The stresses were found to be weakly dependent on the volume concentration up to approximately 0.5, and strongly dependent above this concentration. For flows in which water was the interstitial fluid, the ratio of the shear stress to the normal stress was slightly higher (than in air), and the stresses at lower shear rates were found to be more nearly linearly related to the shear rate. It is suggested that these effects are contributed to by the viscous dampening of grain motions by the water. The second type of flow was distinguished by the existence of an internal boundary above which the granular material deformed rapidly, but below which the granular material remained rigidly locked in place. The thickness of the shearing layer was measured to be between 5 and 15 grain diameters. The stress ratio at the bottom of the shearing layer was found to be nearly constant, suggesting the internal boundary is a consequence of the immersed weight of the shearing grains, and may be described by a Coulomb yield criterion. A scaled concentration is proposed to compare similar data obtained using different-sized materials or different apparatus. An intercomparison of the two types of flow studied, along with a comparison between the present experiments and those of Bagnold (1954) and Savage & Sayed (1984), suggests that the nature of the boundaries can have a significant effect upon the dynamics of the entire flow.

Climate Change and the Episodicity of Sediment Flux of Small California Rivers

We studied the streamflow and sediment flux characteristics of the 20 largest streams entering the Pacific Ocean along the central and southern California coast, extending for 750 km from Monterey Bay to just south of the U.S./Mexico border. Drainage basins ranged in area from 120 to 10,800 km2, with headwater elevations ranging from 460 to 3770 m. Annual streamflow ranged from 0 to a maximum of \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

THE NILE LITTORAL CELL AND MAN'S IMPACT ON THE COASTAL ZONE OF THE SOUTHEASTERN MEDITERRANEAN

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Coastal Sand Dunes of Guerrero Negro, Baja California, Mexico

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Field observations of the fluid‐granular boundary layer under near‐breaking waves

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