Emergent coastline Emergent coastline An emergent coastline is a stretch along the coast that has been exposed by the sea by a relative fall in sea levels by either isostasy or eustasy. Emergent coastline are the opposite of submergent coastlines, which have experienced a relative rise in sea levels. The emergent coastline may have several specific landforms: The Scottish Gaelic word "machair" or "machar" refers to a fertile low-lying raised beach found on some of the coastlines of Ireland and Scotland (especially the Outer Hebrides. Hudson Bay, in Canada's north, is an example of an emergent coastline. It is still emerging by
Coastline paradox Coastline paradox The coastline paradox is the counterintuitive observation that the coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This results from the fractal-like properties of coastlines, i.e., the fact that a coastline typically has a fractal dimension (which in fact makes the notion of length inapplicable). The first recorded observation of this phenomenon was by Lewis Fry Richardson and it was expanded upon by Benoit Mandelbrot. The measured length of the coastline depends on the method used to measure it and the degree of cartographic generalization. Since a landmass has features at all scales, from hundreds of