ABSTRACT

A coast is up to a few kilometers wide tract of interacting terrestrial and marine processes between the shoreline and landward limit of the first major change in terrain, usually in the form of a cliff or coastal dunes. Coastal geomorphology explains the contemporary processes and their landforms, translates the effect of global sea level changes of the Pleistocene and Holocene periods and of the tectonic instability of landmass on the evolution of coastal landscape, and interprets the chronology of Quaternary events for the present state of coastal development. In brief, coastal geomorphology is concerned essentially with the physics of wave motion, hydraulics, sediment transport mechanisms, and interpretation of the environmental change (Kidson, 1968).