Original paper
Beach Platforms in the Chalk of Kent, England
Wood, Alan
Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie Volume 12 Issue 1 (1968), p. 107 - 113
10 references
published: Apr 13, 1968
ArtNo. ESP022001201008, Price: 29.00 €
Abstract
Accurate estimates of the height of former sea-levels in the Pleistocene can only be made by comparison with erosional or depositional features associated with present-day beaches. One of the most useful criteria is the height of the notch cut into cliffs above a beach platform. There are, however, few accurate records of the height of this notch on present-day coastlines and its relationship to actual sea level is not clear (Wentworth 1938, Hills 1949, Edwards 1951). Zeuner (1952) said that the height of the notch provided one of the most reliable means of determining high water mark “being usually within a few feet of the correct value, the error rarely exceeding 2 metres”. A complicating factor is that recent work on beach platforms around the coast of Wales (Hopley 1963, Whittow 1965) suggests that the present rock platform, apparently graded to present sea level, is inherited from an interglacial period when sea level was nearly that of the present day. The height of the platform, and even of the notch, may, there fore, not be determined by present day processes, or related exactly to present day sea-level. This is no localised phenomenon, for the work of Butzer and Cuerda (1962) in Majorca suggests that there too the sea has been at a level similar to that of the present day in different interstadial or interglacial periods. Observations have therefore been made on the platforms below the chalk cliffs of Thanet on the Kent coast where erosion is so rapid in the soft chalk that one can be sure that the notch at the bottom of the cliffs marks the true level of present day erosion and that the beach platform, near the cliffs at least, has been cut while the sea was at its present position relative to the land.
Keywords
sea level change;