2.12 The Holderness Flashcards
What are shoreline management plans?
SMPs are extremely detailed, comprehensive documents and are based on the sediment cell principle that intervention will be largely self contained within each cell, having little or no knock on effect elsewhere
In SMPs what is each sediment cell treated as?
A closed cell
What are the four options considered in SMPs for any stretch of coastline?
- Hold the line
- Advance the line
- Managed retreat/ strategic realignment
- Do nothing/ no active intervention
What is hold the line?
Maintaining the current position of the coastline (often using hard engineering methods)
What is advance the line?
Extending the coastline out to sea (by encouraging build up of a wider beach, using beach nourishment methods and groyne construction)
What is managed retreat/ strategic realignment?
Allowing the coastline to retreat in a managed way (e.g. creating salt marsh environments by deliberately breaching flood banks that protect low quality farmland)
What is do nothing/ no active intervention?
Letting nature take its course and allowing the sea to erode cliffs and flood low lying land and allowing existing sea defences to collapse
What is integrated coastal zone management?
The process that brings together all of those involved in the development, management and use of the coast
What is the aim of an ICZM?
To establish sustainable levels of economic and social activity, resolve environmental, social and economic challenges and conflicts and protect the coastal environment
What does the move to adopt an ICZM strategy mean?
Complete sections of the coast are now being managed as a whole rather than by individual towns or villages.
This is because human actions in one place affect other places further along the coast
- Due to transfers in the sediment cell
- What is eroded in one location eventually becomes a protective beach somewhere else
What do ICZMs and SMPs provide?
A more holistic overview of the coast, enabling sustainable measures to be implemented based on the understanding of natural processes and coastal systems.
What hard and soft engineering strategies are there in Mappleton?
- In 1991, almost £2 million was spent on two rock groynes and a rock revetment to protect Mappleton and the B1242 coastal road
- Blocks of granite imported from Norway for sea defences
- Rock armour absorbs wave energy
- Cliffs have been reproduced, forming gentle slopes which have been stabilised with vegetation
What hard and soft engineering strategies are there in Hornsea?
- Current plan is to “hold the line”
- Concrete sea walls and timber groynes afford protection
- Rock armour placed along a stretch of sea wall -> absorbs wave energy and increased life span of sea wall
- Stone and steel gabion and concrete revetment created to the southern end of Hornsea
- Rock armour has extended coastal defences to the south of the town
What hard and soft engineering strategies are there in Skipsea?
- Small concrete revetment protecting a caravan park
- Gabions built
What are the reasons for the coastline experiencing rapid coastline recession?
- waves that approach from the north east -> direction of the longest fetch
- the high energy environment -> waves have strong, destructive power
- the geology -> predominant rock types are chalk (at Flammy Head) and boulder clay which are easily eroded
- currents -> rip currents lead to higher rates of erosion
- transportation processes -> sediment is carried southwards, towards Spurn head, by longshore drift, which prevents sediment accumulation on beaches, allowing for high rates of cliff erosion
- the weather -> the coastline experiences the stormy weather brought to the UK by mid-latitude, low pressure systems
