Coasts

Question 1

What is fetch?

Answer 1

The distance the wind blows across the water.

Question 2

What is a swash wave?

Answer 2

Water that rushes up a beach.

Question 3

What is a backwash wave?

Answer 3

Water that flows back towards the sea.

Question 4

What are constructive waves?

Answer 4

Low waves that have a powerful swash and ‘build’ the beach.

Question 5

What are destructive waves?

Answer 5

Waves formed by local storms that ‘destroy the beach.’

Question 6

What is weathering?

Answer 6

Wearing away of rock in their original place due to weather factors.

Question 7

What is mass movement?

Answer 7

The sudden movement of rock, often on a cliff, due to gravity.

Question 8

What is erosion?

Answer 8

The removal of material and the shaping of landforms by the power of the sea.

Question 9

What is hydraulic action?

Answer 9

The power of waves as they smash onto a cliff.

Question 10

What is solution in terms of erosion?

Answer 10

The dissolving of soluble chemicals in rocks.

Question 11

What is corrosion?

Answer 11

Fragments of rock picked up and hurled by the sea at the cliff.

Question 12

What is attrition?

Answer 12

Rock fragments carried by the sea knock against one another.

Question 13

What is abrasion?

Answer 13

The ‘sandpapering’ effect of pebbles grinding over a rocky platform.

Question 14

What is long shore drift?

Answer 14

Movement of sand or pebbles along a beach in a zigzag pattern.

Question 15

What is deposition?

Answer 15

Sand and pebbles dropped by the water when the waves lose energy.

Question 16

What is a headland?

Answer 16

A narrow piece of land that projects from a coastline into the sea.

Question 17

What are bays?

Answer 17

A section of the coastline that curves inwards.

Question 18

What is wave refraction?

Answer 18

The bending of a wave as it moves towards the land and enters shallow water and slows down.

Question 19

What are wave-cut platforms?

Answer 19

The narrow flat area often found at the base of a sea cliff created by erosion.

Question 20

What is a spit?

Answer 20

A long narrow finger of sand or shingle jutting out into the sea from the land, created by long shore drift.

Question 21

What is a bar?

Answer 21

A spit which has grown across a bay.

Question 22

What is a discordant coast?

Answer 22

Alternate bands of harder and softer rock creating an indented coastline.

Question 23

What is a concordant coast?

Answer 23

A section of coastline with the same type of rock.

Question 24

What is coastal management?

Answer 24

Methods used to slow or control the rates of erosion at the coast.

Question 25

What is hard engineering?

Answer 25

Using man-made structures to slow erosion, e.g. sea walls.

Question 26

What is soft engineering?

Answer 26

More environmentally friendly methods that work with natural processes to protect the coast.

Question 27

What is managed retreat?

Answer 27

A more sustainable management type, allowing the sea to flood and erode certain sections of the coastline of low value.

Question 28

What is beach nourishment?

Answer 28

The addition of sand or shingle to make an existing beach higher.

Question 29

What is sand dune regeneration?

Answer 29

Planting marram grass on sand dunes to help stabilise sand dunes.

Question 30

What are groynes?

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

What is a sea wall?

Answer 31

A solid concrete structure along the coast. Often these are curved to reflect waves back out to sea and reduce erosion of the coast.

Question 32

What is a salt marsh?

Answer 32

A boggy area of land behind a spit. Sheltered from waves it provides habitat to many species.