Clearwater Beach

Conditions                

Tempurature 87F          Soil = Sand

cloud coverage 15%     medium breeze

 

          We came to clear water beach to study dunes systems. As we made our way to the beach we passed a gopher tortoise and large patches of sea oats. The were small holes along the base of the dunes that crabs use as their homes, you can tell it is a crab home because they like to leave small balls of sand out side of the holes entrance. The primary dunes are located around 40 meters inland from the sea. They are formed by their location from the water they are held together by the plant life growing on top of them. The plants are able to grow because of the distance away from the sea, if they were closer the salinity would be to high and kill the plants. 

 

 

 When walking the beach it is obvious it is maintained, there were so many tire marks it looked like a sand garden.

 We took many measurements of the beach recession, we began around 15 meters in from the water to 15 meters in to the water taking height measurements every 10 meters. The elevation changes drastically with in the first 15 feet then slowly gets deeper as you move out.   

The secondary dune had more plant diversity, ink berry, poor mans patch. There was also more holes on the secondary dunes. I found out that most beach dwelling animals are nocturnal because it is to hot during the day as well as making them more visible to predators.