Barrier island

Barrier islands are islands in front of the mainland that separate part of the sea from the open sea. They lie parallel to the coast and have an elongated, narrow shape. On the sea side, dunes often shape the surface, on the land side they are flat. They were created by deposits of waves, currents and wind. Their formation requires a flat coastal fore, a sufficiently large sediment reserve and a weak to moderate tidal range . If the tidal range is too weak, spits arise , if the tidal range is higher than 4 m, sandbanks arise .

Examples of barrier islands are the West and East Frisian Islands , the Outer Banks off North Carolina on the American east coast or Virginia Key , Key Biscayne , Miami Beach or St. George Island off the coast of Florida .

Web links

Commons : Barrier islands - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wolf-Dietmar Starke: Short coastal studies of the North Sea (PDF file, 802 kB)

Individual evidence

^ Streif, Hansjörg: The East Frisian coastal area - North Sea, islands, mud flats and marshes. Berlin and Stuttgart. Borntraeger, Berlin 1990, ISBN 978-3-443-15051-8 , p. 116

[1] Streif, Hansjörg: The East Frisian coastal area - North Sea, islands, mud flats and marshes. Berlin and Stuttgart. Borntraeger, Berlin 1990, ISBN 978-3-443-15051-8 , p. 116