Erdmann, W.; Scheffers, A.M., and Kelletat, D.H., 2018. Holocene coastal sedimentation in a rocky environment: Geomorphological evidence from the Aran Islands and Galway Bay (western Ireland).

Rocky shores predominantly comprising coarse gravel and boulders are a neglected area of research, in part because of the difficulty in undertaking laboratory analyses on such environments. This paper is concerned with the geomorphology of the deposition of exceptional large boulders in cliff-top positions along the Aran Islands' Inishmaan, Inishmore, and Inisheer coast. These deposits are compared with other depositional units such as isolated finer sediment archives and tonguelike washover features associated with small to medium-sized boulders. Micromorphological signatures from limestone dissolution onshore and bioerosive patterns from the tidal frame were also investigated, with particular consideration of the relative age of boulder movement. Field studies included near-time inspection of the transport power during the strongest storms in living memory in winter 2013–14. To explore spatial and temporal variation in boulder deposition, numerical data for event chronologies are included. The paper also discusses rates of cliff retreat and movement of boulder ridges and contains an evaluation of the storm-only hypothesis vs. contribution of tsunamis to boulder movement.