ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the temporal variability of shorezone data. It describes the research facility and design, then the process variables, and then analyzes the geometric and textural data. The relatively rapid changes suffered by the California coast in spring and autumn are forms of extrinsic threshold that separate distinctive summer and winter regimes. To evaluate what happens between the spring and autumn thresholds, several time series of shorezone data collected near an experimental groin over 128 consecutive summer days are analyzed and interpreted. Dynamic metastable equilibrium sees episodic change occur as thresholds are exceeded in a changing system already experiencing variations. This condition is probably exemplified by the episodic collapse or migration of offshore bars from stations already experiencing temporal variability around a changing state. The chapter concludes by evaluating the observed changes in the context of various explanatory models.
