Offshore Sand Bar Field in the Western Baltic Sea, Southeastern Gelting Bay

A field of up to 20 parallel offshore sand bars in the breaker zone of southeastern Gelting Bay, east of Flensburg in northern Germany. The dataset was published by Geoscience Australia Data and was last updated on 2026-04-30. The bars are formed by waves driven by northwesterly winds and are described as flat, asymmetrical, and consisting of fine to medium-grained sand derived from till.

Use Cases

• Modeling nearshore sediment transport based on bar morphology and wave dynamics described.
• Analyzing the relationship between bar dimensions (crest length, wavelength, height) and distance from shore.
• Studying the impact of storm events on coastal geomorphology based on the described cycle of destruction and rebuilding.

Strengths

• Describes a specific field of up to 20 parallel sand bars.
• Provides concrete morphological measurements, including crest lengths up to 1000 m and wavelengths from 7 m to 70 m.
• Includes a mechanistic explanation for bar formation and destruction linked to wind-driven waves and storms.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the single study location.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 13:57:17.411320; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southeastern Gelting Bay, east of Flensburg, in the western Baltic Sea, north Germany.