Original paper
The question of coastal dunes in tropical humid climates
Jennings, J.N.
Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie Volume 8 Issue 5 (1964), p. 150 - 154
19 references
published: Jan 17, 1964
DOI: 10.1127/zfg/mortensen/8/1964/150
ArtNo. ESP022000805008, Price: 29.00 €
Abstract
A brief reconnaissance of a substantial section of the east coast of Malaya between Kuantan and a point about 20 miles south of Kuala Trengganu subsequent to the I.G.U. Conference of South East Asian Geographers in April 1962 gave me an excellent introduction to the coastal sand barriers or ‘permatang’ of the country. Later I examined lesser but very well formed coastal constructional features of sand on Langkawi I. off the west coast of Malaya. These observations raised a question which would not be worthy of mention here were they not supported by the detailed work of Noss in (1961, 1962) on a further long section of the east coast further south in Johore. In brief it is the question raised by the virtual absence of coastal dunes. Along another coast within the perennially humid tropics, of which I have some experience, namely the coast of the Gulf of Papua in Australian New Guinea, there is the same lacuna in the array of coastal constructional forms. There, however, the coastal sand accumulations are chiefly in the form of ‘cheniers’, meagre sand masses in a coastal sedimentation context predominantly of clay and silt. Dune formation of any note is scarcely to be expected here, nor similarly in the Guiana coast of S. America, where Vann (1959) notes only 'rudimentary' sand dune formations along the crest extending down the backshore of both present-day and stranded beaches.
Keywords
dunes • malaya • kuantan • sand barrier • sand