Crowded coasts Flashcards
Physical factors that create different coastal environments?
- Rock types and erosion create: cliffs and stacks.
- Where big rivers flow into the sea, wide tidal estuaries are formed
- Coastal erosion creates sheltered inlets and deep natural harbours
- Floodplains are wide, flat valley floors regularly flooded. Deltas form at river mouth when sediment is deposited by the river faster than the sea removes it.
- Beaches are formed where the sea deposits eroded material
- Coastal ecosystems are valuable natural environments, important breeding grounds for fish and shellfish.
What encourages different types of development?
- Dramatic scenery of coastlines e.g Jurassic Coast
- Natural harbours for import and export of raw materials attracts industry
- Estuaries allow easy access for ships, encourage port development
- Alluvium deposited on floodplains make soil fertile
- Some coastal ecosystems have a high biodiversity which attracts fishing and tourists.
- deep water access for boats
How has development led to coastal population growth?
- Accessibility, fertile soil, equable climate, dramatic scenery.
- Fishing, tourism and port development create employment opportunities.
- Land is flat so more property development and businesses
Three land use models
- Burgess: settlement growing out in concentric zones from the centre
- Hoyt:has concentric zones but adds sectors that grow along linear features
- Harris and Ullman: multiple nuclei of different land used
How does coastal development distort shape of a land use model?
Sea limit growth in that direction. Linear zones develop along the sea front
How does coastal development distort accommodation of a land use model?
Larger hotels based on the sea front, closest to the Tourist Business District (TBD). Smaller hotels further away from the TBD-Multiple nuclei.
How does coastal development distort open spaces of a land use model?
Parks and pleasure gardens on the seafront
How does coastal development distort entertainment of a land use model?
Piers want to attract tourists, so they locate where tourists gather at the sea front.
4 different types of conflict
Tourism, overfishing, aquaculture and industrialisation
How does tourism create conflict?
- Conflict between tourists and locals over traffic congestion, parking and noise.
- Environmental impact as increased tourism means more road building and construction of other amenities. Built on ecologically important land. Conflict with tourists and people protecting ecology of the coast.
How does overfishing create conflict?
- Rapid decline of fish populations
- Efforts to conserve fish conflict with fishing industry
- Limits to fishing could lead to job losses
How does aquaculture cause conflict?
- Affordable fish and shellfish cultivated in ‘fish farms’
- Conflict with producers and environmentalists.
- High levels of fish decrease dissolved oxygen levels in water lead to death of fish and plant life.
- Diseases spread from farmed fish
How does industrialisation cause conflict?
- Ports expanded which means coastal ecosytems under threat-flat land good for construction
- Conflict between industry exploiting advantages of locating near the coast, and people trying protect SSSI.
- Pollution from industrial waste affects swimmers and marine life. Conflict between coastal industries and tourists and environmentalists.
What are the inputs, processes and outputs of coasts?
- Inputs: sediment from cliffs eroded and transported offshore by waves
- Processes: wave action, tidal movement, erosion, transportation and deposition
- Outputs: sediment washed out to sea
What are coastal sediment cells?
-Lengths of coastline that are self-contained for the movement of sediment
How are waves formed?
- Wind blowing over surface of sea, friction between wind and surface gives circular motion
- Effect of wave depends on height, height affected by wind speed and fetch
- As waves approach shore they break, friction with seabed slows bottom of waves making them more elliptical. Crest of waves rises then collapses.
Two types of wave?
- Constructive: low frequency. Low and long. Powerful swash carries material up beach and deposits it.
- Destructive: High and steep, high frequency, strong backwash removes material
Sub-aerial processes along a coastline
- Weathering: weakens cliffs making them vulnerable
- Throughflow: flow of water through cliffs (throughflow) and the flow of water over land (runoff) can make cliffs unstable causing landslides.
- Mass movement landslides
5 main ways waved erode the coastline
- Abrasion/corrasion: rock/sediment grind against rocks and cliffs.
- Hydraulic action: Air in cracks in cliffs compressed when waves crash in. Pressure exerted breaks off rock pieces.
- Quarrying: Energy of waves breaks against cliff detaching bits of rock
- Corrosion/solution:Soluble rocks gradually dissolved by seawater
- Attrition:Bits of rock smash against eachother and break into smaller bits