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Information about Headlands And Bays

“Bay” redirects here. For other uses, see Bay (disambiguation).
For Headlands Center for the Arts, see .
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Headland on which lies the community of Argentia, on the island of Newfoundland, Canada
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The bay at San Sebastian, Spain
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The bay at San Sebastián, Spain
A headland is an area of land adjacent to water on three sides. A bay is the reverse, rather an area of water bordered by land on three sides. A large headland may also be called a peninsula. Long, narrow and high headlands may be called promontories. When headlands dramatically affect the ocean currents they are often called capes. A large bay may also be called a gulf, sound or bight. A narrow bay may also be called a fjord if its sides are relatively steep. Any bay may include other bays (for example, James Bay is a bay within Hudson Bay).

Formation

A headland is a piece of land that juts into the sea from the main land coast line. Headlands are shaped by erosion. They are formed when the sea attacks a section of coast consisting of alternating bands of hard and soft rock. The bands of soft rock such as sand and clay, erode more quickly than those of more resistant hard rock such as chalk. This would form a headland.

A bay is an area of water bordered by land on three sides. Bays are found between headlands where there are alternating outcrops of resistant rock and less resistant rock. Waves erode the areas of softer rock more rapidly to form bays.

Geology and geography

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The bay of Baracoa, Cuba
Headlands and bays are often found together on the same stretch of coastline. Headlands and bays form on discordant coastlines, where bands of rock of alternating resistance run perpendicular to the coast. Bays form where weak (less resistant) rocks (such as sands and clays) are eroded, leaving bands of stronger (more resistant) rocks (such as chalk, limestone, granite) forming a headland, or peninsula. Refraction of waves occurs on headlands concentrating wave energy on them, so many other landforms, such as caves, natural archs and stacks, form on headlands. Wave refraction disperses wave energy through the bay, and along with the sheltering effect of the headlands this protects bays from storms. This effect means that the waves reaching the shore in a bay are usually constructive waves, and because of this, many bays feature a beach. A bay may be only metres across, or it could be hundreds of kilometres across.

Sometimes bays form where movements of the earth's crust (tectonics) bring areas of land together, or move them apart. Usually these bays are referred to as seas or gulfs and not bays.

List of some well-known headlands

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The bay of İzmir, in Turkey

List of some well-known bays

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The San Diego Bay seen from the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan area.
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Landsat 7 composite imagery of Port Phillip Bay.
A couple of non-gulfs (actually straits) are:

See also

External links

A bay is an area of water bordered by land on three sides.

Bay may also refer to:
  • Bay (horse), a color of the hair coats of horses
  • Bay leaf, the aromatic leaves of several species of the Laurel family
  • Bay, Somalia

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A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered on three sides by water. A peninsula can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, or spit.[1]

Europe

  • Europe itself is a peninsula.

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ocean current is any more or less continuous, directed movement of ocean water that flows in one of the Earth's oceans. Ocean Currents are rivers of hot or cold water within the ocean.
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sound is a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, wider than a fjord, or it may identify a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land (see also strait).

There is little consistency in the use of 'sound' in English-language cartography.
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For other meanings of bight, see Bight.


In geography, bight has two meanings.

A bight can be simply a bend or curve in any geographical feature—usually a bend or curve in the line between land and water.
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fjord (or fiord) is a long, narrow estuary with steep sides, made when a glacial valley is filled by rising sea water levels. The seeds of a fjord are laid when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley through abrasion of the surrounding bedrock by the rocks and sediment it carries.
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James Bay (French, Baie James) is a large body of water on the southern end of Hudson Bay in Canada. Both bodies of water extend from the Arctic Ocean. James Bay borders the provinces of Quebec and Ontario; islands within the bay (the largest of which is Akimiski Island)
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Hudson Bay (French: baie d'Hudson) is a large (1.23 million km²), relatively shallow body of water in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, parts of North Dakota and Minnesota, and
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A discordant coastline occurs where bands of differing rock type run perpendicular to the coast.

The differing resistance to erosion leads to the formation of headlands and bays.
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Geological resistance is a measure of how well minerals resist erosive factors, and is primarily based on hardness, chemical reactivity and cohesion. [1] The more hardness, less reactivity and more cohesion a mineral has, the less susceptible it will be to erosion.
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Sand is a granular material made up of fine mineral particles. It is a naturally occurring, finely divided rock.

Sand comprises particles, or granules, ranging in diameter from 0.0625 (or 1⁄16 mm) to 2 millimeters.
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Clay is a naturally occurring material, composed primarily of fine-grained minerals, which show plasticity through a variable range of water content, and which can be hardened when dried or fired.
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Chalk (IPA: /ˈtʃɔːk/) is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite.
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Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite (calcium carbonate: CaCO3). Limestone often contains variable amounts of silica in the form of chert or flint, as well as varying amounts of clay, silt and sand as disseminations, nodules, or layers
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Granite (IPA: /ˈɡrænɪt/) is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granites are usually medium to coarsely crystalline, occasionally with some individual crystals larger than the
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A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered on three sides by water. A peninsula can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, or spit.[1]

Europe

  • Europe itself is a peninsula.

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Refraction is the change in direction of a wave due to a change in its speed. This is most commonly seen when a wave passes from one medium to another. Refraction of light is the most commonly seen example, but any type of wave can refract when it interacts with a medium, for
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A landform comprises a geomorphological unit, and is largely defined by its surface form and location in the landscape, as part of the terrain, and as such, is typically an element of topography.
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cave is a natural underground void large enough for a human to enter. Some people suggest that the term 'cave' should only apply to cavities that have some part which does not receive daylight; however, in popular usage, the term includes smaller spaces like sea caves, rock
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natural arch or natural bridge is a natural formation (or landform) where a rock arch forms, with a natural passageway through underneath. Most natural arches form as a narrow ridge, walled by cliffs, become narrower from erosion, with a softer rock stratum under the
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stack is a geological landform consisting of a steep and often vertical column or columns of rock in the sea near a coast. Stacks are formed when part of a headland is eroded, leaving a small island.
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beach, or strand, is a geological landform consisting of loose rock particles - such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, cobble - or even shell fragments, along the shoreline of a body of water.
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1 metre =
SI units
1000 mm 0 cm
US customary / Imperial units
0 ft 0 in
The metre or meter[1](symbol: m) is the fundamental unit of length in the International System of Units (SI).
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1 kilometre =
SI units
0 m 0106 mm
US customary / Imperial units
0 ft 0 mi
A kilometre (American spelling: kilometer, symbol km
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crust is the outermost layer of a planet.

The crust of the Earth is composed of a great variety of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. The crust is underlain by the mantle.
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Tectonics, (from the Greek for "builder", tekton), is a field of study within geology concerned generally with the structures within the crust of the Earth (or other planets) and particularly with the forces and movements that have operated in a region to create these
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The three-letter acronym SEA may refer to:
  • Scientists and Engineers for America, a pro-science political advocacy group.
  • Schoof-Elkies-Atkin algorithm
  • Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (IATA: SEA, ICAO: KSEA)
  • Sea Education Association

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Gulf can refer to:
  • A bay, usually referring to a large bay that is an arm of an ocean or sea. For example, the Gulf of Mexico is the ninth largest body of water in the world.
  • Gulf is also a novella by Robert A. Heinlein.
  • "The Gulf" http://www.myspace.

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Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30,221,532 km² (11,668,545 sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area, and 20.4% of the total land area.
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Cape Agulhas (Portuguese: Cabo das Agulhas, "Cape of Needles") is the geographic southern tip of the African continent and is defined for hydrographic purposes to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
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