I have found out that coastlines on the eastside are always more sandy than the rocky coastlines of the westside all over the planet.
What is the reason for this?
Not too sure. Have you seen this in both northern and southern hemispheres? Might be too broad of a generalization. Currents? Prevailing winds? Mojo?
Due to the direction of the rotation of the earth. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it!
The rotation of the earth seams to be the best answer, but witch way it turns and what did it cause? I think its all over the planet, do you have a exception?
It’s an interesting observation. Could have something to do with whatever forces caused the splitting up of the continents and continue to shift the tectonic plates.
Where,s Stony ?
Not a Geologist. But if the generalization holds true, my gestalt would be in line with NSBlue and plate tectonics – areas of convergence (i.e. subduction).
I was thinking about the ring of fire but that encompasses the eastern sides of parts of Asia and others. Your suggestion may seem so but, I would suggest it is a generalization like some cultures have no rhythm. Perhaps the one who Burns Stones has insight. What say you Swami? I haven’t the foggiest.
As a former geologist, I think you have found out something that is not true. What is the source for this belief?
This doesn’t hold true for Florida. The west coast of Florida is sand and mud flats.
Then there is New England a lot of the coast is rocky.
The west coast of Africa seems to have a lot of sand.
I don’t know if its true everywhere on the planet, maybe there are some exceptions. For the islands I was on and many others I have heard of its true and I want to have a answer to this. I also heard Australia should be the same. Whats about Hawaii? Does anybody know?
The answer is that its not true. ‘‘I have heard’’ and ‘‘I was told’’ are not reliable sources. Also, ‘‘Sandy vs Rocky’’ is pretty broad and poorly defined. All of the basic geologic processes that create and move sand, cobbles, gravel, etc, are well understood. You have not discovered some great mystery of geology, you are just seeing what you want due to confirmation bias.
The Hawaiian Island chain is a direct result of flowing magma then lava. These flows have been affected by the currents, weather direction and prevailing wind pressures. Large continental land masses are not as affected by these factors as much. Gravity has a big effect by water flowing downhill creating the aforementioned cobble, sand, and silt. So topography has a role in it too. As we all surmise, there is no one blanket answer. Orientation rather than direction ( east, west etc.) is closer to what you are looking for. Right or wrong, my take on the matter.
Maybe you are right ahausheer, but i think its not so easy to find out if the east sides are more “sandy” than the “rocky cliff coast” westsides, it depends also which rock types are at these coasts.
The example of hawaii shows this very clear. Thank you tblank.
My suggestion is to think about the turning of the earth a little more. There is the moon and two tidal waves witch are traveling around the earth constantly. The spin direction of the earth would fit to it. We are turning to the east, that means the tidal waves always hit the eastside of every coast around the globe.
If its true there are more beaches on earth where you can experience a sunrise than a sunset.
On Oahu, we have very fine sand along the East side beaches where the wave action is much calmer and it get’s courser as you go more north and around the south. The west side has course sand. Being from the south west side I prefer the course sand. The fine sand sticks to your body and takes a lot more work to get off. A lot of the east side and south side have outer reefs, but the fine sand is pretty much something we see on the east side.
Our natural tidal and wave action moves sand from the north and west all the way back down towards the east and south. It’s common to have beaches that have no sand for months of the year become very large beaches for several months, Shark Country is a good example. From November till about March, when the North and West shores have the huge surf, sand is pushed around and a sandy beach appears. There’s enough sand movement to fill in a rocky shore that sits 5 to 6 feet above the water line at low tide. Then it slowly goes away and during the summer when the surf is good, the shoreline is rocky again. Funny that the sand starts right at the edge of Shark Country, so depending on how your board gets pushed in, you could sometimes miss the rocks, but usually it would get nailed. That’s why we called leashes Ding Strings.
One thing that is becoming a real problem is the rising sea level mixed with king tides. I’m seeing places that once had quite a bit of sandy beach disappear. The waterline is moving closer in. It won’t be long for the waterline to completely swallow certain places. With all the changes our wonderfully ignorant government has done to the shoreline, we messed up the natural movement of sand.
If you don’t live along or near the ocean you may not see how much things are changing.
Another thing about sand… a lot of the white sand is ground up coral made from parrot fish and other fish that eat coral, fish poop. Black sand us usually fresh lava pummeled by the surf, and tends to be courser.
Another thing, the Big Island of Hawai’i is still geologically a baby, it’s still growing as we speak. There are few white sandy beaches on this island. There’s black sand, green sand and other sand made from the ground up land, but the south east side of the island is still getting covered by lava. On Maui and Molokai there are large areas where the land is sand, and it is illegally excavated for cement work. Millions of tons of sand have been mined from Maui and Molokai. I have no idea where that resource came from. Same on Oahu, a lot of the town called Kailua where the really fine sand is was built on sand.
in my travels I found the west coast of most large land masses are dry and desert like…generally.
Not really shure about what are we considering west or east beaches. Its a relative cuestion, but what I have seen is Portugal, Morocco, Senegal, are west facing coastlines, and sandy. Well, Portugal is kinda half rock. Brasil, Uruguay and Argentina are east facing and also sandy coastlines.
Maybe I’m not getting it, but it’s interesting.
Over here in Andalucia, southern Spain, we have a mostly south facing coastline and the changes we are seeing in wind intensity and direction and currents have chanegd the coast a lot .
our beach was gone for a whole year, first time anyone have seen that place without sand. But now it’s back, who knows for how long.