Coastal Management

Subdecks (1)

Cards (36)

  • Hard engineering strategies involve using artificial structures to manage coastal erosion
  • Soft engineering strategies are a more sustainable and natural approach to manage coastal erosion
  • Erosion is a natural process that shapes cliffs and can cause cliff collapse over time, necessitating coastal management
  • Sea walls:
    • Concrete walls at the foot of a cliff to prevent erosion
    • Advantages: effective at protecting the base of the cliff, usually have promenades for people to walk along
    • Disadvantages: waves can still break down and erode the sea wall, expensive (approximately £2,000 per metre)
  • Rock armour:
    • Large boulders at the foot of a cliff to break waves and absorb energy
    • Advantages: cheaper than sea walls, easy to maintain, can be used for fishing
    • Disadvantages: look different to local geology, expensive to transport
  • Gabions:
    • Rocks held in mesh cages in erosion-affected areas
    • Advantages: cheap (approximately £100 per metre), absorbs wave energy
    • Disadvantages: not very strong, looks unnatural
  • Groynes:
    • Wooden or rock structures built out at right angles into the sea
    • Advantages: builds a beach encouraging tourism, traps sediment carried by longshore drift
    • Disadvantages: by trapping sediment, it starves beaches further down the coastline, looks unattractive
  • Hard engineering management involves using artificial structures, whereas soft engineering management is a more sustainable and natural approach to manage coastal erosion
  • Soft engineering strategies involve the use of natural, sustainable solutions to control the coast without building artificial structures
  • Beach nourishment:
    • Sand is pumped onto an existing beach to build it up
    • Advantages: blends in with the existing beach, larger beaches appeal to tourists
    • Disadvantages: needs constant replacement, sand has to be brought in from elsewhere
  • Reprofiling:
    • The sediment is redistributed from the lower part of the beach to the upper part
    • Advantages: cheap and simple, reduces wave energy
    • Disadvantages: only works when wave energy is low, needs continuous repetition
  • Dune nourishment:
    • Marram grass planted on sand dunes stabilises them and helps trap sand to build them up
    • Advantages: relatively cheap, maintains a natural-looking coastline
    • Disadvantages: can be damaged by storm waves, areas have to be zoned off from the public, which can be unpopular
  • Erosional landforms along the coastline include headlands, bays, caves, arches, stacks, stumps, and wave-cut platforms
  • Depositional landforms include beaches, spits, and bars
  • Headlands and bays form when a coastline is made of different types of rock, with soft rock eroding quickly to form bays and hard rock forming headlands
  • Cliffs and wave-cut platforms are more common on headlands, while bays are sheltered with constructive waves that deposit sediment to form beaches
  • Cliffs are shaped through erosion and weathering, with soft rock forming gentle sloping cliffs and hard rock forming steep cliffs
  • A wave-cut platform is a wide gently-sloping surface found at the foot of a cliff, formed by erosion at the base of the cliff between the high and low water mark
  • Caves, arches, stacks, and stumps are erosional features commonly found on a headland, formed through processes like hydraulic action and abrasion
  • Erosional landforms include headlands, bays, caves, arches, stacks, stumps, and wave-cut platforms
  • Depositional landforms along the coast include beaches, spits, and bars
  • Beaches are made up of eroded material transported and deposited by the sea, often forming in sheltered areas like bays where constructive waves build them up with a strong swash and weak backwash
  • Sandy beaches are usually found in bays with shallow water and low-energy waves, while pebble beaches form where cliffs are eroded and with higher energy waves
  • A beach profile has ridges called berms, showing high tide and storm tides, with larger material at the top due to high-energy storm waves and the smallest material nearest the water due to attrition
  • Spits are extended stretches of sand or shingle jutting out into the sea from the land, forming when sediment is carried by longshore drift and deposition occurs, creating a long thin ridge of material
  • A spit can grow across a bay, joining two headlands together, forming a bar that can trap shallow lakes known as lagoons, which may eventually fill up with sediment