Beaches often occur along coastal areas, where wave or current action deposits and reworks sediments. Beach materials come from erosion of rocks offshore, as well as from headland erosion and slumping producing deposits of scree. A beach is a geological landform along the shoreline of a body of water. There are several conspicuous parts to a beach, all of which relate to the processes that form and shape it. The beach profile changes seasonally due to the change in wave energy experienced during summer and winter months.
In more than thirty countries in Europe, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Costa Rica, South America and the Caribbean, the best recreational beaches are awarded Blue Flag status, based on such criteria as water quality and safety provision. Urban beaches attempt to mimic natural beaches with fountains that imitate surf and mask city noises, and in some cases can be used as a play park. Seagrasses and other beach plants grow on undisturbed areas of the beach and dunes. Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the 1980s, South Beach was used as a retirement community with most of its ocean-front hotels and apartment buildings filled with elderly people living on small, fixed incomes.
Another unique aesthetic attribute of South Beach is the several colorful and unique lifeguard stands, still used today by South Beach's lifeguards. South Beach is one of the world's foremost locations for fashion shoots, making the Miami area the model shoot capital of the United States. Many people have stopped themselves from seeing The Beach because of badreviews from critics and the story of the crew wrecking an entire island tomake the movie.
Beaches
Ocean beaches are habitats with organisms adapted to salt spray, tidal overwash, and shifting sands. With beaches giving us so much, we have to protect them from a variety of potential problems.
The particles of which the beach is composed can sometimes instead have biological origins, such as shell fragments or coralline algae fragments. It is customary for people to walk barefoot to the beach, because of the pleasant feeling of sand on their soles and between their toes. The soothing qualities of a beach and the pleasant environment offered to the beach goer are replicated in artificial beaches, such as "beach style" pools with zero-depth entry and wave pools that recreate the natural waves pounding upon a beach.
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