Coastal Environments of the Maritime Provinces

This review of the coastal process and morphology characteristics of the Maritime Provinces provides a general summary of existing information and data for an area that has a wide variety of shoreline types, geologic units, and oceanographic conditions. The general coastal trends of the area are controlled by the regional southwesterly-northeasterly trending structures associated with the Appalachian system. Superimposed on this basic geologic framework, the contrasting shoreline types result from the high degree of variability in local geology, relief, wave-energy levels, tidal range and sediment availability. This variability provides the basis for discussion of the shorelines of the Maritime Provinces. Twenty-two distinct coastal environments are systematically defined and described.