Beachmere Shoreline Progression Rates Over 1,700 Years

Geoscience Australia Data provides a chronostratigraphic record of shoreline changes at Beachmere, southeastern Queensland, Australia, over the last 1,700 years. The dataset documents the optical ages and progradation rates for seven distinct beach ridges, with rates ranging from approximately 0.16 to 0.40 meters per year.

Use Cases

• Model shoreline progradation rates using optical ages from seven beach ridges to reconstruct past coastal accretion.
• Analyze the change in ridge spacing from ~95 meters apart to <33 meters apart to infer shifts in sediment supply dynamics.
• Correlate overlapping optical ages of ridges 3 to 1 with historical events like European settlement to assess anthropogenic impact.
• Estimate past relative sea levels by comparing the optical age of the inner 7th ridge with modern shoreline position.

Strengths

• Provides a 1,700-year temporal record of coastal change based on optical dating.
• Contains specific progradation rate measurements, such as ~0.16 m yr-1 and ~0.40 m yr-1, derived from ridge ages.
• Documents detailed morphological features like ridge spacing (~95 m apart) and intertidal flat width (~200 m).

Limitations

• Dataset scope is limited to a single site (Beachmere, Queensland), limiting geographic generalizability.
• Optical ages include uncertainty ranges (e.g., ±80 yrs), which may affect precision for fine-scale temporal analysis.
• Data is presented in HTML format, which may require extraction and parsing for quantitative analysis.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Optical dating of pebbly sand beds forming beach ridges.

Time Range

Last 1,700 years

Freshness

null

Geography

Beachmere, southeastern Queensland, Australia