Geography Assignment Report

Introduction

White Haven beach, is a beach located on White Sunday island on Australia's east coast in the coral sea QLD. It lies across from Chalke's beach and is next to Hamilton island. The beach is widely known for being one of the cleanest beaches in the world and some of its main features and attractions include the beautiful waters and gleaming white sands.

Geographical Features

The beach is 7km kilometres long, but the most iconic part of the beach is surrounded by the landscape of the island for example there is a small isthmus and peninsula to the left of the beach called hill inlet lookout, which has a great view over the beach. The water leads into a large dried up river that goes inward towards the other side of the island. The beach gets its white colour from silica forming 98% of the sands grains, the silica most likely comes from ocean currents pulling the silica from the ocean and depositing it onto the beach. When geologist's first discovered white Sunday island and white haven beach it was suggest that quartz beaches were formed from the volcanic eruptions that have taken place up to 132 million years ago

Formation

White Haven beach was formed by erosion and deposition. The beach was formed by deposition from the waves and tides washing on to the island and depositing the tiny pieces of silica and sand onto the shoreline. The isthmus and peninsula, (hill inlet) lookout was created by erosion and the water washing pieces and chunks of the land away another example of this is the river that goes into the island. The spits, sandbars and the mostly dried-up river were created from the water eroding sand and more ground away from the beach and island. When the tide comes in, it makes the beach look like a sound instead, and hiding the spits and sandbars

Changes Over Time

Over time White Haven Beach has changed in many ways. Overtime water and rain erodes the soil of hill inlet lookout and the hills surrounding the beach so eventually hill inlet lookout will be partially in the next few million years. gone because the isthmus will be gone. Survey by scientist and geologists alike have shown that 1.85 billion tons of tiny grains of sand and silica have been deposited on to the landform in the last 10 000 years. When the tide comes in at white haven beach the water runs through river and the more times that this happens the more soil will be eroded, and the river will go straight through the island.

Human Interaction

Despite humans destroying many landforms of the natural world, White Haven beach remains the cleanest beach's in the world or at least it's one of cleanest beach's. Humans have built lookouts and other attractions, but nothing has been really built on the beach keeping it clean despite being a very popular tourist attraction. Hopefully over time people can keep this landform and it habitants safe by keeping pollutants away from the beach and keeping its reputation as one of the cleanest beaches in the world

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