Sonoma Sea Coast Stacks
Source:
https://visionarywild.com/workshops/sonoma-coast-2/
This week, I had the privilege of visiting Sonoma County near the San Francisco Bay Area. Although Sonoma county is largely known for excellent food and wine, it is also home to many fascinating geological features, such as land bridges that protrude out of the water and vertical columns of rock known as sea stacks.
Due to its position on the coast as well as being in the water, this area, with these structures in particular, are subject to erosion by water as well as wind. As such, over time, some mass is lost as nature takes its tolls on these structures.
The structures were most likely created due to the San Andreas fault which runs parallel to the coastline of the Sonoma County State Park.
However, there are a few aspects which I would love to research and have questions answered about. My first question/research opportunity would be, have the sea stacks seen any growth due to the San Andreas fault in recent years? If I were able to research it myself, I would love to see data regarding the heights of the stacks along with any fault activity in the area to see if there was any growth during activity.
My second question/research opportunity would be related and ask the question of whether or not there is a net gain or net loss with the the loss of mass due to erosion and the gain due to the San Andreas fault. In order to find the answer to this question, I would need to have access to the overall heights of the sea stacks over the past hundreds of years to see if there is any noticeable trend.
My last question/research opportunity would be to see if the coast line had moved and if this area had primarily been land with rivers running through it at first. The reason I would ask this is due to the land bridges that appear in the water. I would assume that if these structures were always surrounded by water, then erosion would happen uniformly to a degree. However, the fact that there is a hollowed out section suggests that one particular area of the structure was faced with more erosion inducing factors.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoma_Coast_State_Park
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