Principles of tidal sedimentology / Оновы приливного осадкообразования

Tides have fascinated humans for millennia. Their regularity and their apparent correlation with lunar behavior intrigued natural philosophers, even the Greeks, who live on an essentially tideless sea although there are strong tidal currents in localized constrictions. Apparently, they learned about tides from areas outside the Straits of Gibralter and from the Arabs who experienced signifi cant tides in the Persian Gulf. From a practical perspective, tidal changes in water elevation and the currents associated with these changes were of great importance for shipping and military purposes. In areas such as the countries surrounding the southern North Sea, such considerations required accurate tidal predictions, which in turn drew the attention of some of the greatest astronomers and mathematicians. 
 Among the notable individuals who devoted at least part of their careers to the study of tides, and have contributed to our understanding of them are Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Kepler, Euler, Laplace, and Lord Kelvin (Cartwight 1999). Indeed, many of the widely used mathematical techniques that we now take for granted were developed to help understand the behavior of the tides. More recently, interest in tides and storm surges has been fostered by the need to protect ever-increasing coastal population centers from catastrophic inundation, and by the desire to “reclaim” tidal fl ats for agricultural and industrial purposes. Foremost in this activity have been The Netherlands, Germany, and adjacent parts of Denmark. 
 Research on the nature of tidal deposits has been underway for about 50 years. Early studies on the Wadden Sea along the North Sea coast of The Netherlands and Germany were among the original landmark efforts in this area (e.g. van Straaten 1954; Postma 1961; Reineck 1963 ), and were followed closely by work in England (Evans 1965) and France (Bajard 1966). Such efforts were driven by the dual need to understand the coastal zone for the protection of population centers and to provide an actualistic analog for ancient sedimentary successions. In North America, Klein’s work on the Bay of Fundy (Klein 1963) initiated detailed efforts in that part of the world. The early German work in the North Sea had a major biological and ichnological component, a topic that was pursued systematically at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in the southeastern United States (e.g. Frey and Howard 1969). Despite having some of the most widespread tidal fl ats in the world, work along the Chinese coast was relatively slow to develop, although there were notable early studies (e.g. Wang 1963 ). In the carbonate realm, pioneering studies were conducted on the tidal fl ats of Andros Island, the Bahamas (e.g. Shinn et al. 1969), and the Persian Gulf (Evans et al. 1969) <...>