Matt Eliot

Coastal science often uses conceptual models to describe how landforms are expected to evolve under different pressures. Coral islands challenge the use of general models, as the presence or absence of individual features can affect how each island changes, sometimes with significant differences in the same archipelago. Managing impacts to islands and island communities effectively into the future needs an understanding of each island, with local geomorphology telling a key piece of each...

Ask a coastal engineer and an oceanographer the same question, and you’ll get two different answers. They're both right, and yet they're both wrong. I was recently asked to look at near-bed currents on the Sydney Shelf. I'd done my reading (as a coastal scientist) and it was a clear slam-dunk that the shelf is wave-dominated with tiny tidal currents. Following a similar method I'd applied on the Gold Coast in ~12-m water depth, I started to evaluate the considerable record of...

Western Australia's Capes Coast illustrates how inner shelf and nearshore features can modify sediment transfers: it is not just wave-driven littoral transport along the shore! The inner shelf structure provides a crucial influence on shelf-coast sediment exchange. Here rocky formations provide a spectacular coast, robust under severe storm waves. However, the sandy beaches and dunes have reduced resilience due to low sand supply, and under projected sea level rise, their structural controls...