Littleham Cove
| Littleham Cove | ||
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| Waters | English Channel | |
| Land mass | Great Britain (island) | |
| Geographical location | 50 ° 36 '49.2 " N , 3 ° 21' 33.8" W | |
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| width | approx. 100 m | |
Littleham Cove is a small cove north of Straight Point near Exmouth , in the county of Devon , on the English Channel coast in the southwest of England .
location
Nearby Littleham is a small village on the eastern outskirts of Exmouth, just over a mile away is Littleham Cove. The bay is about ten miles south of the city of Exeter , four kilometers east of Exmouth and about ten kilometers southwest of Sidmouth .
geology
From Orcombe Point at Exmouth to Old Harry Rocks east of Studland Bay extends to the east Devon and Dorset is a 155 km long coastline, the first natural landscape in England by the UNESCO in the World Heritage was taken. Along this so-called Jurassic Coast , rocks from the Triassic , Jurassic and Cretaceous are to be found in natural outcrops , which at the time were deposited in a depression that no longer exists today, which is known as the Wessex Basin . Littleham Cove is part of the Jurassic Coast.
A geological fault runs right through that part of the bay wall that faces Straight Point . At this fault, there is a drastic change in the geological character of the cliffs, because there are fluvial sandstones of the "Exmouth Mudstone and Sandstone Formation" (roughly translatable as "Exmouth Clay and Sandstone Formation"), which build up the Straight Point headland , abruptly replaced by the predominantly clay and siltstone "Littleham Mudstone Formation" ("Littleham claystone formation"), which builds the cliff northeast of and including Littleham Cove. As a result, this cliff is u. a. less steep and erosion channels ( rinsing channels ) cut into the wall from top to bottom at regular intervals , which are not found in the sandstone cliff of Straight Point. The east side of Straight Point also has a surf platform just above the ebb level, which was formed by the surf in the sandstones of the Exmouth Formation. At Littleham Cove this rock platform ends suddenly due to the geology change and a beach stretches out at the foot of the cliff to the northeast. This consists of the pebbles of the "Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds" ("Budleigh Salterton Conglomerates"), which adjoin the Littleham Formation in the rock sequence.
Both Exmouth and Littleham Formation belong lithostratigraphically to the "Aylesbeare Mudstone Group" ("Alyesbeare Mudstone Group"). The Budleigh Salterton conglomerates already belong to the next younger parent lithostratigraphic unit, the “Sherwood Sandstone Group” (“Sherwood Sandstone Group”). The cliff between Littleham Cove and Budleigh Salterton contains the type profile of the Littleham Formation.
The clay and siltstones of the Littleham Formation were deposited in the early Triassic in Playa lakes under arid to semi-arid climatic conditions.
A peculiarity of the Littleham Formation are the greenish-white-gray uranium - vanadium - concretions , which u. a. contain the uranium mineral pitchblende . They are particularly abundant in the deeper part of the coastal profile between Littleham Cove and Budleigh Salterton and are slightly radioactive . The intensity of the radiation that emanates from them is roughly ten times the natural background radioactivity .
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Dorset and East Devon Coast . UNESCO World Heritage Center. 2001. Retrieved October 19, 2010.
- ^ Datasheet of the Exmouth Mudstone and Sandstone Formation in the British Geological Survey's online encyclopedia of named rock units
- ↑ a b Datasheet of the Littleham Mudstone Formation in the British Geological Survey's online encyclopedia of named rock units
- ↑ Datasheet of the Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds in the British Geological Survey's online encyclopedia of named rock units
Web links
- Ian West: Budleigh Salterton, Littleham Cove and Straight Point, Devon: Geology of the Wessex Coast. 2012 richly illustrated online excursion guide