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

A field of up to 20 parallel offshore sand bars has developed in the breaker zone of southeastern Gelting Bay, east of Flensburg in north Germany. The bars consist of fine to medium grained sand derived from till, with crests as long as 1000 meters and wavelengths varying from 7 to 70 meters. This dataset from Geoscience Australia describes these wave-formed features, which are likely destroyed during severe storms and rebuilt as they wane.

Use Cases

• Modeling coastal sediment transport based on bar morphology and grain size.
• Analyzing the impact of northwesterly wind-driven waves on nearshore bedform generation.
• Studying the lifecycle of transient coastal features based on their described destruction and rebuilding cycles.

Strengths

• Describes a specific geomorphic feature with up to 20 parallel bars.
• Includes quantitative morphological details such as bar lengths (up to 1000 m), wavelengths (7-70 m), and heights (5-70 cm).
• Identifies the sediment source (till) and formative process (northwesterly wind-driven waves).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data freshness should be verified despite the listed update date of 2026-04-20.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-20 03:25:52.746795

Geography

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