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Holocene Environmental Change and River-Mouth Sedimentation in the Baie des Anges, French Riviera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Michel Dubar  and
Edward J. Anthony
Michel Dubar
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Sédimentologie, CNRS, Rue Albert Einstein, Bâtiment 1, F-06565 Valbonne Cédex, France
Edward J. Anthony
Affiliation:
Département de Géographie, URA 1476 CNRS, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, 98 Boulevard Edouard Herriot, B.P. 209, F-06204 Nice Cédex 3, France
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Abstract

River mouths on the steep, high-relief coast of the French Riviera exhibit thick sequences of Holocene marine, estuarine, deltaic, and river channel-floodplain sediments that overlie basal fluvial Pleistocene gravel. Gravel is uncommon in most of the early to middle Holocene aggradational-progradational marine, estuarine, deltaic sediments, despite an ample supply from rock units in the steep adjoining uplands. River-mouth gravel is common only in late Holocene river channels and in barrier beaches perched on finer-grained nearshore sediments. Neither downslope grain-size fining on alluvial fans nor sediment stacking patterns during sea-level (base-level) rise readily account for the lack of early to middle Holocene gravel in the river-mouth sediment wedges. Holocene sea-level rise led to the storage of fine-grained sediments in shallow marine, estuarine, and deltaic environments in the present coastal zone. We infer that humid temperate conditions, a dense forest cover, landscape stabilization, and a regular quiescent river flow regime associated with the Atlantic climatic optimum limited gravel supply in the adjoining catchments and gravel entrainment downstream during the early Holocene. Sea-level stabilization in the middle and late Holocene coincided with a marked change in bioclimatic conditions toward the present Mediterranean-type regime, which is characterized by a less dense forest cover, soil erosion, and episodic catastrophic floods. The late Holocene was thus a time of downstream bedload channel aggradation, fine-grained floodplain and paludal sedimentation, and seaward flushing of clasts leading to the formation and consolidation of the gravel barrier beaches that bound the rivermouths and embayments.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , May 1995 , pp. 329 - 343
Copyright
University of Washington

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