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Coastal upwelling is the best known type of upwelling, and the most closely related to human activities as it supports some of the most productive fisheries in the world. Coastal upwelling will occur if the wind direction is parallel to the coastline and generates wind-driven currents.
A marine coastal ecosystem is a marine ecosystem which occurs where the land meets the ocean. Worldwide there is about 620,000 kilometres (390,000 mi) of coastline. Coastal habitats extend to the margins of the continental shelves, occupying about 7 percent of the ocean surface area.
Integrated coastal zone management minimizes the negative human impacts on coasts, enhances coastal defense, mitigates the risk associated with the sea level rise and other natural hazards. The beach erosion is a type of bioerosion which alters the coastal geography through beach morphodynamics .
Because land is nearby, there are large discharges of nutrient rich land runoff into coastal waters. Further, periodic upwellings from the deep ocean can provide cool and nutrient rich currents along the edge of the continental shelf. As a result, coastal marine life is the most abundant in the world.
Coastal geography is the study of the constantly changing region between the ocean and the land, incorporating both the physical geography (i.e. coastal geomorphology, climatology and oceanography) and the human geography (sociology and history) of the coast.
Earlier theories by Alfred Wegener and Alexander du Toit of continental drift postulated that continents in motion "plowed" through the fixed and immovable seafloor. The idea that the seafloor itself moves and also carries the continents with it as it spreads from a central rift axis was proposed by Harold Hammond Hess from Princeton University and Robert Dietz of the U.S. Naval Electronics ...
The term coastal zone is used to refer to a region where interactions of sea and land processes occur. [10] Both the terms coast and coastal are often used to describe a geographic location or region located on a coastline (e.g., New Zealand's West Coast, or the East, West, and Gulf Coast of the United States.)
Stacks are formed over time by wind and water, processes of coastal geomorphology. [2] They are formed when part of a headland is eroded by hydraulic action, which is the force of the sea or water crashing against the rock. The force of the water weakens cracks in the headland, causing them to later collapse, forming free-standing stacks and ...