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Geological Society, London, Engineering Geology Special Publications; 1998; v. 13; p. 3-13;
DOI: 10.1144/GSL.ENG.1998.013.01.01
© 1998 Geological Society of London

Section 1: Marine sand and gravel geology and resources

Sources of sand and gravel on the Northern European Continental Shelf

D. J. Harrison1, C. Laban2, J. O. Leth3 & B. Larsen3

1 British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK
2 Netherlands Institute of Applied Geoscience TND - National Geological Survey, PO Box 157, 2000 AD, Haarlem, The Netherlands
3 Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Ministry of Environment and Energy, Thoravej 8 DK 2400, Copenhagen NV, Denmark

The extraction of marine sand and gravel has taken place in a number of countries around the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and English Channel for several centuries, but large-scale dredging for aggregates only began in earnest in the 1960s. Today, marine sands and gravels have an increasing role to play in maintaining European supplies of concreting aggregates as well as material for beach nourishment and constructional fill. The distribution of sand and gravel resources offshore is uneven. They vary in their thickness, their composition and grading, and their proximity to the shore. Many deposits lie in places that are currently inaccessible to the dredging industry.

This paper outlines the production of marine sand and gravel in northern Europe and describes the distribution, composition and Quaternary origins of the most important marine sand and gravel resources in northern Europe. Examples are given for the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark, and in summary form for France, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Ireland and Germany. Most marine sand and gravel deposits are of fluvial or glacial origin and have been reworked to varying degrees by marine and coastal hydrodynamic processes. They represent a range of former depositional environments, including fluvial channel-fill or terrace deposits, glacial meltwater plain deposits, seabed lag gravels and degraded shingle beach or spit deposits, as well as modern marine tidal sandbanks and sandwave deposits.