This location affords a picture perfect spot for observing the natural forces at work maintaining Daytona’s sandy soil from shoreline to the dunes separating the beach from all the modern man-made condos. Public beach access is located 100 yards away as are public restrooms & showers.
Beach Formation: A beach is a landform along the shoreline of an ocean, sea, lake or river. It usually consists of loose particles often composed of rock. The name of the rock particles found on any given beach depends chiefly upon the size of the rock material. The size of these rock particles can range anywhere from fine granular sand to large boulders. Gravel, shingle, pebbles and cobblestones all fall within this range. Sometimes, the particles forming the land may be comprised of biological materials such as mollusk shells and coralline algae.
Wild beaches are beaches which do not have lifeguards or trappings of modernity nearby, such as resorts and hotels. They are sometimes called undeclared, undeveloped or undiscovered beaches. Wild beaches can be valued for their untouched beauty and preserved nature.
Beaches typically occur in areas along the coast where wave or current action deposits and reworks sediments. Sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles. The composition of sand is highly variable, depending on the local rock sources and conditions, but the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal settings is silica (silicon dioxide, or SiO2), usually in the form of quartz.
The second most common form of sand is calcium carbonate, for example aragonite, which has mostly been created, over the past half billion years, by various forms of life like coral and shellfish. It is, for example, the primary form of sand apparent Sand is transported by wind and water and deposited in the form of beaches, dunes, sand spits, sand bars and related features. In environments such as gravel-bed rivers and glacial moraines it often occurs as one of the many grain sizes that are represented.
Sand-bed rivers, such as the Platte River in Nebraska, USA, have sandy beds largely because there is no larger source material that they can transport. Dunes, a distinctive geographical feature of desert environments, are on the other hand sandy because larger material is generally immobile in wind.
Sand is a component of soil. Coralline algae are red algae in the order Corallinales. They are characterized by a thallus that is hard because of calcareous deposits contained within the cell walls. The colors of these algae are most typically pink, or some other shade of red, but other species can be purple, yellow, blue, white or gray-green.
Coralline algae play an important role in the ecology of coral reefs. Sea urchins, parrot fish, limpets (mollusks), and chitons (mollusks), feed on coralline algae. Many are typically encrusting and rock-like, found in marine waters all over the world. Unattached specimens (maerl, rhodoliths) may form relatively smooth compact balls to warty or fruticose thalli. A close look at almost any intertidal rocky shore or coral reef will reveal an abundance of pink to pinkish-grey patches, splashed as though by a mad painter over rock surfaces. These patches of pink "paint" are actually living algae: crustose coralline red algae. The red algae belong to the division Rhodophyta, within which the coralline algae form a distinct, exclusively marine order, the Corallinales. There are over 1600 described species of nongeniculate coralline algae.
Mollusc (or mollusk) shells typically consist of a calcareous exoskeleton which encloses, supports and protects the soft parts of an animal in the phylum Mollusca, which includes snails, clams, tusk shells, and several other classes. Not all shelled molluscs live in the sea, many live on the land and in freshwater. The ancestral mollusc is thought to have had a shell, but this has subsequently been lost or reduced on some families, such as the squid, octopus, and some smaller groups such as the caudofoveata and solenogastres, and the highly derived Xenoturbella. Today, over 100,000 living species bear a shell; there is some dispute as to whether these shell-bearing molluscs form a monophyletic group (conchifera) or whether shell-less molluscs are interleaved into their family tree.
ENVIRONMENT: In addition to the materials used to form any beach give the beach its mass, but the environment too plays a significant role in the formation of any given beach. Natural elements such as wind, water, and temperature all play a part in not only forming a beach, but in maintaining it over time. Other geological features also play a role in where and how a beach is formed.
To claim this find, I need you email me a brief description in your own words the following geological information.
Current weather & surf information should be available on the nearby lifeguard stand itself.
1. Based on your own physical observations of the soil (color, consistency & coarseness) what materials do you believe were or are being used to form and maintain Dayton’s sandy soil why?
2. Based on current conditions, what role, if any, do you think the surf (waves, tides, etc.) played in forming and maintaining Dayton’s sandy soil and why?
3. Based on current conditions, what effect, if any, do you think the weather had in both forming and now maintaining Dayton’s sandy soil - why?
4. Based on your observations of past & present plant & animal life, what impact do you think biology has on maintaining Dayton’s sandy soil - why?
5. Provide a current weather report for the day you visited.