Exam 11: The Ocean Floor

How, if at all, did sea level change at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch?

Increasing quantities of_________ in the atmosphere correlated to 0.6° C increase in mean annual temperature during the 20th century and could produce considerably greater global warming.

The net longshore movement of water, and transport of sand parallel to the beach, are fundamentally caused by__________ .

Low initial costs and modest maintenance costs, high potential for storm damage and low to moderate potential for negative environmental effects are consequences of policies to________ .

__________are constructed perpendicular to the shoreline and designed to interrupt beach drift and longshore currents that "change" shorelines irrespective of human plans and foreshore engineering works.

How big are most barrier islands?

__________are structures built perpendicular to the coast along the entrance to navigable tidal inlets, river mouths, or harbours, to stop them from shifting location or filling with sand from beach drift or longshore currents.

During the 1960s, a Pacific winter storm hit Queen Charlotte Sound causing waves to break that brushed the underside of the welldeck on one of Shell's exploration wells. Assuming the local water depth was 50 m and the base of the well deck was 20 m above sea level, what was the approximate wavelength for those Pacific storm swells?

Relative to shoreline, provided sea level_________ , irregularities along a coast can be gradually smoothed out by the combined processes of erosion and deposition.

What is the landward limit of the shoreface zone?

______________refers to the movements of sand and water on a beach face due to a breaking wave.

The backshore zone is__________ .

What does the following sequence signify? Mud overlain by hummocky, crossbedded sand overlain by swaley, crossbedded sand overlain by parallel, tabular bedded, laminated sand overlain by sand with large scale crossbedding.

Low initial costs and low maintenance costs, low potential for storm damages, and low negative environmental impact are consequences of policies to__________ .

A natural sand bar or sand/gravel ridge exposed at low tide that connects one island to another island, or an island to the mainland, is called a________.

What is the path followed by a sand grain from a succession of waves impinging obliquely onto a beach?

Where is Canada's greatest tidal range?

How does refraction affect the shape of incoming waves along a beach?

Much of the sediment deposited in the underwater portion of the coastal profile is caused by___________

Which one of the following would not be a likely effect of a breakwater?