PrintWave-Dominated Barriers
Wave-dominated barrier islands are long, narrow barrier islands with typically widely spaced tidal inlets. Because of the wave dominance, the capability for longshore transport is high, and tidal inlets in this type of system are relatively narrow because longshore transported sediment acts to fill in the inlets and restrict their widths. The tidal deltas on the seaward side of the inlets, ebb-tidal deltas, also tend to be small compared to mixed energy barrier systems because waves tend to limit the distance that ebb-tidal deltas can migrate seaward.
Close up view of the wave-dominated barrier islands of the North Carolina Outer Banks along the mid-Atlantic eastern coast of the U.S.A. Note the long, thin morphologies of the islands and the sparseness of tidal inlets that connect the backbarrier environments to the nearshore and beyond.
Credit: NASA