geo

• Grazing too many livestock for too long on the land, so vegetation cover is depleted and is unable to recover.
• Higher income country (HIC) is a subdivision of countries based on the World Bank income classifications (GNI per capita), which in 2022 was High Income $13 205 or above.
• Lower income country (LIC) is a subdivision of countries based on the World Bank income classifications (GNI per capita), which in 2022 was Low Income $1 085 or below.
• Newly emerging economies (NEEs) are countries that have begun to experience higher rates of economic development, usually with higher levels of industrialisation.
• Producer: An organism that is able to absorb energy from the sun through photosynthesis.
• Nutrient cycling: A set of processes whereby organisms extract minerals necessary for growth from soil or water, before passing them on through the food chain - and ultimately back to the soil and water.
• Food chain: The connections between different organisms (plants and animals) that rely on one another as their source of food.
• Food web: A complex interconnection of all the food chains in an ecosystem.
• Community of plants and animals that interact with each other and their physical environment.
• Global ecosystem: A very large ecological area on the earth’s surface, with fauna and flora (animals and plants) adapting to their environment.
• NEEs differ from LICs in that they no longer rely primarily on agriculture, have made gains in infrastructure and industrial growth, and are experiencing increasing incomes and high levels of investment, for example Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa (the so-called BRICS countries).
• Large ships can cross large expanses of water.
• Coastal landscapes in the UK: A variety of coastal landscapes exist in the UK, including cliffs, beaches, dunes, and estuaries.
• Abrasion (or corrasion): The wearing away of cliffs by sediment flung by breaking waves.
• Arch: A wave-eroded passage through a small headland
• This begins as a cave formed in the headland, which is gradually widened and deepened until it cuts through.
• Attrition: Erosion caused when rocks and boulders transported by waves bump into each other and break up into smaller pieces.
• Bar: Where a spit grows across a bay, a bay bar can eventually enclose the bay to create a lagoon.
• Bars can also form offshore due to the action of breaking waves.
• Beach: The zone of deposited material that extends from the low water line to the limit of storm waves.
• The beach or shore can be divided in the foreshore and the backshore.
• Beach nourishment: The addition of new material to a beach artificially, through the dumping of large amounts of sand or shingle.
• Beach reprofiling: Changing the profile or shape of the beach
• It usually refers to the direct transfer of material from the lower to the upper beach or, occasionally, the transfer of sand down the dune face from crest to toe.
• Cave: A large hole in the cliff caused by waves forcing their way into cracks in the cliff face.
• Chemical weathering: The decomposition (or breakdown) of rock caused by a chemical change within that rock; sea water can cause chemical weathering of cliffs.
• Cliff: A steep high rock face formed by weathering and erosion along the coastline.
• Deposition: Occurs when material being transported by the sea is dropped due to the sea losing energy.
• Dune regeneration: Action taken to build up dunes and increase vegetation to strengthen the dunes and prevent excessive coastal retreat
• This includes the re-planting of marram grass to stabilise the dunes, as well as planting trees and providing boardwalks.
• Erosion: The wearing away and removal of material by a moving force, such as a breaking wave.
• Gabion: Steel wire mesh filled with boulders used in coastal defences.
• Groyne: A wooden barrier built out into the sea to stop the longshore drift of sand and shingle, and so cause the beach to grow
• It is used to build beaches to protect against cliff erosion and provide an important tourist amenity.
• Setting back or realigning the shoreline and allowing the sea to flood areas that were previously protected by embankments and seawalls is a part of managed retreat.
• A wave cut platform is a rocky, level shelf at or around sea level representing the base of old, retreated cliffs.
• A sand dune is a coastal sand hill above the high tide mark, shaped by wind action, covered with grasses and shrubs.
• Managed retreat involves allowing cliff erosion to occur as nature takes its course, with erosion in some areas and deposition in others, resulting in benefits such as less money spent and the creation of natural environments.
• Bays of less resistant rock where the land has been eroded back by the sea.
• A stack is an isolated pillar of rock left when the top of an arch has collapsed, and over time further erosion reduces the stack to a smaller, lower stump.