Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Sand cays of eastern Guadalcanal

1969; Royal Society; Volume: 255; Issue: 800 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rstb.1969.0018

2054-0280

D. R. Stoddart,

Island Studies and Pacific Affairs

The cays and reefs of eastern Guadalcanal have never been described, and are hardly referred to in the literature. Brenchley (1873, pp. 274-276) visited Marau Sound in H.M.S. Curacoa in September 1865, but made no observations of value; Guppy unfortunately did not call there; and the work of the Geological Survey of the British Solomon Islands has been confined to the high islands. There is brief mention of some of the cays in the Pacific Islands Pilot , but in effect the cays of east Guadalcanal were unknown at the time of this study. With the exception of studies by Umbgrove (1928, 1947) and Kuenen (1933) in the East Indies, studies of reef islands have largely been carried out on open-ocean atolls or on barrier reefs. Island morphology in these areas has been shown to be dependent on barrier reef geometry and wave energy, the most diverse island types being found in barrier reef areas with a wide range of energy conditions (Steers 1929, 1937; Spender 1930; Stoddart 1965). It had been expected that the Melanesian reefs, with their diverse topography, would show a similar range of island form. Several workers have also attached great importance to a presumed recent negative shift of sea level, both in originating many surface features of reefs and in permitting island accumulation on abnormally high reef flats (Gardiner 1931; Sewell 1935; Cloud 1954). It is doubtful whether such a negative shift in sea level did occur, at least in the Holocene (Shepard et al . 1967), and it was thus of interest to study Melanesian reef islands formed in an area of recent tectonic uplift, local emergence simulating conditions once thought to be more general.