Beach-ridge development in Lake Michigan: Shoreline behavior in response to quasi-periodic lake-level events

Strandplains of arcuate beach ridges are common in coastal embayments in parts of the Great Lakes. Similarities in beach-ridge development and geomorphology are recognizable in many of the embayments in the Lake Michigan basin despite differences in size and shape, available sediment type and supply, predepositional slope and topography, and hydrographic regime between the embayments. These similarities are primarily a product of three scales of quasiperiodic lake-level variation ranging in time from 30 to 600 years and in water level change from 0.5 to 3.7 m. The interaction of these three lake-level variations can be represented on a Curray (1964) diagram (rate of water level change versus rate of sediment supply). The position of any shoreline on the diagram and the type of behavior the shoreline is experiencing is a product of the interaction of the three variations.