**6. Outline**

*Sedimentary Processes - Examples from Asia, Turkey and Nigeria*

formed into a deltaic and alluvial plain.

The Lake Bafa has been formed as the result of delta progradation of the Büyük Menderes River. The sediments of the river have filled the marine embayment (Latimian Gulf). During the last millennia, the Latimian Gulf has been trans-

**4. The beach environment and its variation during geological time**

at the mean low tide level and terminating at the fair-weather wave base.

In the coastal protection, the root systems of the mangrove forests trap sediments

region of Sundarbans hosts the 10% of the mangrove forests in the world and a half of

flowing down rivers and towards the land. This allows to stabilize the coastline and prevents the erosion operated from waves and storms. In the areas where the mangroves have been cleared, the coastal damage from hurricanes and typhoons is stronger. The role of mangroves in the coastal sedimentation has been deeply studied [26–43]. Alongi [26] has studied the carbon sequestration in the mangrove forests. The mangrove forests are highly productive, with the carbon production rates which are equivalent to the tropical humid forests. The mangroves host more carbon below the ground and have higher carbon mass ratios than the terrestrial trees. The most of the mangrove carbon is stored as large pools in the soil and dead roots. Moreover, the mangroves account for only approximately 1% of carbon sequestration by the world's forests, but as coastal habitats they account for 14% of carbon sequestration by the global ocean. Banerjee et al. [27] have studied four sediment cores from selected locations of the Sundarbans mangroves and Hooghly estuary (northeastern coast of India) to reconstruct the 210Pb geochronology and to individuate the trace metal distribution in the sediments. The mangroves of India account for about 5% of the world's mangrove vegetation and are spread over an area of about 6740 km2

**5. The role of mangroves in coastal sedimentation**

The beaches and the barrier islands are long and narrow sand accumulations, occurring within the deltas, along the depositional strike from deltas or in an oceanic or lacustrine context, without any relationship with the deltas. Both the depositional systems are aligned parallel to the shoreline. The beaches are attached to the land, while the barrier islands are separated from the land by a shallow lagoon and are often dissected by tidal inlets. The formation of the beaches and of the barrier island systems includes a steady supply of sands to the shoreline (river input, longshore drift) and a hydrodynamic setting characterized by low and moderate wave energy but a limited tidal range. The beaches and the barrier islands have been constructed by the wave processes, which have been intensively studied through direct observation, experimentation, and theoretical procedures. Regarding the wave processes controlling the beaches, the first process to be discussed is the wave transformation, the second one is represented by the wave-induced nearshore currents, and the third one consists of the temporal variations in the wave regime. The major storm events have the role to control the landward retreatment or the local breaching of the eolian dune ridge. The beach includes a variety of sub-environments, including the eolian sand dunes, the backshore-foreshore, and the shoreface. In particular, the eolian sand dunes form complex ridges, capping the beach face above the mean tide level and resulting from wind reworking of sands emplaced in the upper beach by the storm waves, attaining a height of several meters. The backshore represents the supratidal part of the beach, which is flooded during the storm events, whereas the foreshore represents the intertidal area. The shoreface is the subtidal part of the beach, starting

**4**

This topic examines different studies on the sedimentary processes, including:


The relationships of the sedimentary processes with the sea level changes and the subsidence have also been examined.

. The

*Sedimentary Processes - Examples from Asia, Turkey and Nigeria*
