Hard And Soft Engineering Flashcards
Sea walls
Flat faced or curved. Concrete wall. At foot of cliffs of top of beach. Dissipate and reduce wave energy. Very effective, long life span Expensive, ugly
Groynes
Wooden fences,right angle to beach.
Interrupt longshore drift,catch sediment thus widening the beach.
Wider beach= absorb more wave energy
Larger beach= protect coastline and good for tourism. Not very expensive.
Starve down current beaches=more vulnerable to erosion.ugly.
Rock armour
Boulders at foot of cliff.
Break wave and absorb energy.
Cheap to buy and maintain.
Unnatural, don’t fit with geology if cliff. Expensive to transport.
Gabions=cages of smaller rocks but same thing .
Beach nourishment
Add sand/shingle to beach to make it higher and wider.
Cheap, benefits tourists, natural.
Constant maintenance needed.
Dune regeneration
Artificially creating new sand dunes.
Act as a buffer between land and sea.
Use fencing to help trap sand and planting grass into matting to keep ecosystem.
Absorb storm and wave energy,cheap.
Time consuming maintenance, less effective than hard engineering.
Managed retreat
Allow erosion and flooding. Compensation to farmers. Breaching existing coastal defences. Cheap,salt marsh develop= new habitat and natural defence. Land is lost, farmers livelihood gone.