Chénier

A chenier or chénier is a sandy or shelly beach ridge that is part of a strand plain, called a “chenier plain,” consisting of cheniers separated by intervening mud-flat deposits with marsh and swamp vegetation. Cheniers are typically one to six meters high, tens of kilometers long, hundreds of meters wide, and often wooded. Chenier plains can be tens of kilometers wide. Cheniers and associated chenier plains are associated with shorelines characterized by generally low wave energy, low gradient, muddy shorelines, and abundant sediment supply. The name is derived from the Louisiana French word for these formations, “chênière", meaning oak-grove, referring to the forests of live oaks Quercus virginiana that occupy the chenier ridges within southwest Louisiana.

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