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657 new
islands discovered
Sunday April 24, 2011 06:27:15 PM,
IANS
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Washington: A total
of 657 new islands have been discovered around the world, a global
survey has said.
The Earth has many more barrier islands than previously thought,
it said. The northern hemisphere is home to 74 percent of these
islands.
The nation with the most barrier islands is the US, with 405,
including those along the Alaskan Arctic shoreline, the Christian
Science Monitor reported quoting the study.
Barrier islands are found along all continents except Antarctica
and in all oceans, and they make up roughly 10 percent of the
Earth's continental shorelines, it said.
The newly identified barrier islands didn't miraculously appear in
the last decade. They've long existed but were overlooked or
misclassified in past surveys, the Monitor quoted study team
member Matthew L. Stutz of Meredith, as saying.
Scientists believed barrier islands couldn't exist in locations
with seasonal tides of more than 13 feet.
Yet the new survey identifies the world's longest chain of barrier
islands along a stretch of the equatorial coast of Brazil, where
spring tides reach 23 feet, the Monitor noted.
The 54-island chain extends 571 km along the fringe of a mangrove
forest south of the mouth of the Amazon river.
Past surveys didn't recognize it as a barrier island coast partly
because older satellite images didn't show a clear separation
between the islands and mangrove, says Stutz.
The findings illustrate the need for a new way to classify and
study barrier islands, so that scientists can predict which of
today's islands might be in danger of disappearing in the near
future, the researchers say.
Unlike stationary landforms, barrier islands build up, erode,
migrate and rebuild over time in response to waves, tides, and
other physical processes in the open ocean environment. They help
protect low-lying mainland coasts against erosion and storm
damage, and can be important wildlife habitats.
The study was published in the March edition of the Journal of
Coastal Research, according to the Monitor Tuesday.
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