(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1982-08)
Speer, Paul E.; Aubrey, David G.; Ruder, E.
A historical study of barrier beach and inlet changes for the Nauset Inlet
region, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was performed to document patterns of beach
and inlet change as a preliminary to designing and carrying out ffeld studies
of inlet sediment transport. 120 historical charts from 1670 and 125 sets of
aerial photographs from 1938 formed the basis for this study. Specific
aspects of barrier beach and inlet change addressed include onshore barrier
beach movement, longshore tidal inlet migration, and longshore sand bypassing
past the inlet. In an effort to correlate forcing events with barrier changes,
an exhaustive study of the local storm climate was performed. Detailed
treatment of the specific mechanisms responsible for Nauset Inlet migration
episodes in a direction opposite the dominant littoral drift are treated in a
companion paper by Aubrey, Speer, and Ruder (1982). Documentation of the data
base available for the Nauset Area is presented herein as appendices.
