A Coast to Explore

Coasts have always enchanted us with their wild beauty. Coast to Explore offers an accessible guide to what we see when we look at a coastline: the wave-cut rock cliffs, sea caves, and sea stacks, as well as sand and gravel beaches and coastal dunes. Focusing specifically on North America’s Pacific coast, Hayes and Michel explain how the San Andreas Fault system created a new and complex shoreline that has enthralled visitors from around the world, and he shows how the coastline has changed through erosion driven by El Niños, the effects of tsunamis, the formation of spectacular raised marine terraces created as a result of the changing sea level during the ice ages, and the continuing rise of the Coast Ranges. Richly illustrated with original diagrams, photographs, and satellite imagery, the book paints a truly complete picture of a complicated topic smoothly distilled from the scientific literature and personal observations along the coast.