Coasts Flashcards
What is fetch?
The distance the wind blows across the water.
What is a swash wave?
Water that rushes up a beach.
What is a backwash wave?
Water that flows back towards the sea.
What are constructive waves?
Low waves that have a powerful swash and ‘build’ the beach.
What are destructive waves?
Waves formed by local storms that ‘destroy the beach.’
What is weathering?
Wearing away of rock in their original place due to weather factors.
What is mass movement?
The sudden movement of rock, often on a cliff, due to gravity.
What is erosion?
The removal of material and the shaping of landforms by the power of the sea.
What is hydraulic action?
The power of waves as they smash onto a cliff.
What is solution in terms of erosion?
The dissolving of soluble chemicals in rocks.
What is corrosion?
Fragments of rock picked up and hurled by the sea at the cliff.
What is attrition?
Rock fragments carried by the sea knock against one another.
What is abrasion?
The ‘sandpapering’ effect of pebbles grinding over a rocky platform.
What is long shore drift?
Movement of sand or pebbles along a beach in a zigzag pattern.
What is deposition?
Sand and pebbles dropped by the water when the waves lose energy.
What is a headland?
A narrow piece of land that projects from a coastline into the sea.
What are bays?
A section of the coastline that curves inwards.
What is wave refraction?
The bending of a wave as it moves towards the land and enters shallow water and slows down.
What are wave-cut platforms?
The narrow flat area often found at the base of a sea cliff created by erosion.
What is a spit?
A long narrow finger of sand or shingle jutting out into the sea from the land, created by long shore drift.
What is a bar?
A spit which has grown across a bay.
What is a discordant coast?
Alternate bands of harder and softer rock creating an indented coastline.
What is a concordant coast?
A section of coastline with the same type of rock.
What is coastal management?
Methods used to slow or control the rates of erosion at the coast.
What is hard engineering?
Using man-made structures to slow erosion, e.g. sea walls.
What is soft engineering?
More environmentally friendly methods that work with natural processes to protect the coast.
What is managed retreat?
A more sustainable management type, allowing the sea to flood and erode certain sections of the coastline of low value.
What is beach nourishment?
The addition of sand or shingle to make an existing beach higher.
What is sand dune regeneration?
Planting marram grass on sand dunes to help stabilise sand dunes.
What are groynes?
Wooden walls on a beach at 90 degrees to the sea. They aim to trap sediment (sand and pebbles) moving by long shore drift and build up the beach.
What is a sea wall?
A solid concrete structure along the coast. Often these are curved to reflect waves back out to sea and reduce erosion of the coast.
What is a salt marsh?
A boggy area of land behind a spit. Sheltered from waves it provides habitat to many species.
