Identifying Coastal Landforms In this activity you will use Google Maps to travel around the world and look at different coastal landforms or structures For each structure give its name and describe briefly how it was formed We start our journey in the coastal town of Scheveningen the Netherlands We can see jetties which are man made structures and we can also see the beach which is formed by disposition Just north of Scheveningen is the coastal city of Wijk aan Zee famous for its beaches which become extremely crowded during warm summer days In addition to the beaches what other landscape features can you identify We see grass covered dunes which are formed by deposition Traveling south to the Breton Coast of France we come to Mt St Michel a famous tourist attraction listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site The Abbey dates back to the early Middle Ages Have a tombolo which is depositional landform in which an island connects to a mainland by a narrow piece of land Crossing the Channel we come to Sidmouth UK A groyne a structure that interrupts water flow from a short or a bank It also allows the movement of sediment Back to the European mainland Jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea is Pensicola on the east coast of Spain Tombolo again but turns into a red island Next we cross the Atlantic Ocean and travel to Cape Cod Massachusetts This would be a curved spit which is defined as a disposition bar or beach landform Traveling south we reach Ocean City Maryland This is a bay mouth bar resulting from a longshore drift Usually a sandbank that closes access to a bay On the Gulf of Mexico at the Mississippi River delta is the City of New Orleans The delta itself was formed by deposition from the river But there are also several features along the coast This is a barrier island which is an island that is flat or have a lump from tidal action A little farther west along the Gulf Coast is Padre Island Texas Bad mouth bar Galveston Texas suffered extreme flooding from a hurricane that hit in 1900 At that time the highest point in the city of Galveston was only 8 7 ft 2 7 m above sea level The hurricane brought with it a storm surge of over 15 ft 4 6 m that washed over the entire island Storm surge and tides began flooding the city by the early morning hours of September 8 The cyclone dropped 9 in 230 mm of precipitation in Galveston on September 8 setting a record for the most rainfall for any 24 hour period in the month of September in the city s history Bad mouth bar Tied island Up the Pacific coast to Harris Beach Oregon Before leaving the United States we make a stop at Sleeping Bear Dunes on the east coast of Lake Michigan Lake shore along the northwest shore of the Michigan peninsula On to the Southern Hemisphere and the island of Tasmania Coastal landform this is a point of land which is steep and extends into the water Back to Europe for a short visit to Venice Italy Lagoon these are separated from larger bodies of water by barrier islands or barrier peninsulas And we ll end our journey in Venice California Breakwater a human made feature for coastal protection