Shoreline Progradation Rates at Beachmere, Australia, Over 1,700 Years

Seven beach ridges at Beachmere, southeastern Queensland, Australia, provide a record of shoreline accretion and relative sea level over the last 1,700 years. Optical dating reveals sea level was approximately 1 meter higher 1,700 years ago, with progradation rates ranging from ~0.16 to ~0.40 meters per year. The dataset is provided by Geoscience Australia Data and was last updated in 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling historical shoreline change rates based on optical ages of beach ridges.
• Analyzing shifts in sediment supply and coastal accretion phases over the last 1,700 years.
• Calibrating relative sea-level reconstructions for southeastern Australia based on ridge morphology.
• Studying the impact of European settlement on coastal geomorphology based on changes in ridge spacing and accretion rates.

Strengths

• Covers a specific 1,700-year time span with optical dating providing temporal control.
• Includes quantified progradation rates (~0.16 to ~0.40 m yr⁻¹) and sea-level change (approx. 1 m higher).
• Documents a clear morphological shift in ridge spacing from ~95 m to <33 m apart.

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 a single site study at Beachmere.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Optical dating and chronostratigraphic analysis of beach ridge morphology.

Time Range

Last 1,700 years

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 14:22:22.877074; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Beachmere, southeastern Queensland, Australia