FUNDAMENTAL STUDY ON INLET GEOMORPHOLOGY -AN APPROACH FOR A GLOBAL A-P RELATIONSHIP-

A number of inlets exist mainly in the eastern coast of Hokkaido, Japan, however relatively small number of inlets, for instance Imakirekuchi Inlet of Lake Hamana, can be seen in the rest of Japan coast. Here, tidal prism data (P) and cross sectional area (A) of inlet in Japan, China, U.S.A., New Zealand, Vietnam, and India are collected from the available literatures to study local character of inlets and global character of inlets. A modified inlet A-Prelationship in Japan is derived first, then inlet A-Prelationships in each countries are considered separately. Finally, global A-Prelationship, for which tidal prism ranges from 105 to 109 and cross sectional area ranges 101 to 104 in metric units, is derived with reasonably good correlation. So far, this global A-Pequation could be applied to an inlet in other countries as the first order approximation, but also necessary to improve the equation by incorporating more field data.