Coastal management - Example

Question 1

Example

Answer 1

Holderness coast in North East England. Has the highest rates of coastal erosion in Europe

Question 2

Whats happening to the Holderness coast

Answer 2

Erosion is causing cliffs to collapse, and are made from soft material and easily eroded boulder clay

prevailing winds mean that the eroded material is moved south along the coast by longshore drift exposing a new area of cliff to erosion

about 1.8 m of land is lost every year and in great Cowden it has been 10 m per year

over 11km is managed and is hard engineered because people lots of people live on the coast. there is also an important road which links everyone and the gas terminal at Easington supplies 25% of Britain gas and is on the edge

Question 3

Protection of Holderness

Answer 3

IN 1991, 450 m of coastline was protected with a cost of £2 million and used over 61000 tons of rock

hard engineering:

rock armour along the base of the cliffs to absorb the waves

Building two rock groynes to trap sand

Question 4

defences saved Mappleton (in Holderness) but still caused conflicts

Answer 4

The operation was succesful - mappleton was no longer vulnerable to erosion

but

the rock groynes prevented sediment moving south but had caused great erosion south of Mappleton

e.g. loss OF SOUTH MAPPLETON - CARAVAN PARKS WERE LOST (oh no what a shame)

LOSS OF HABITAT AT SPURN HEAD

IN 1999 A 1KM STRETCH OF COAST NEAR THE GAS TERMINAL AT EASINGTON HAD TO BE PROTECTED WITH A 6.6 MILLION COST