Coastal Management- strategies
along a stretch of coastline
•Explain how the coastline is divided up to make
management easier.
•Describe the methods used to prevent coastal
erosion and divide these into traditional and
modern types and also hard and soft
engineering methods.
•Evaluate the efficiency of each method and
identify advantages and disadvantages of each
method.
•Describe the management system in place for a
named stretch of the UK Coast
Starter
Risks of rapid coastal erosion
in Holderness
Can we protect the entire coast
of the UK or elsewhere?
1. How do we decide where needs
protection?
2. How do we decide what level of
protection to give to a place?
3. What happens to places that we don’t
protect?
4. Who organises the protection of the
coast?
What methods can we use to protect
the coast?
CLIFF FOOT AND BEACH
STRATEGIES
Technique
Nature & Purpose
Breakwaters offshore
Embankments
Gabions
Groynes
Revetments
Rip Rap (Rock Armour)
Sea walls
CLIFF FACE STRATEGIES
Cliff drainage
Cliff fixing
Cliff regrading
Beach nourishment
Beach re-profiling
Dune regeneration
Developing natural defences
of coral reefs and
mangroves
Offshore reefs
Ref Phillip Allan 240 -242
Strengths
Weaknesses
Breakwaters Offshore
Embankments
Gabions
Groynes
Revetments
Rip Rap / Sea wall
Straight sea wall
Recurved sea wall
Cliff drainage
Cliff fixing
Cliff regrading
Beach nourishment
Beach re-profiling
Dune regeneration
Developing natural defences of
coral reefs and mangroves
Offshore reefs
Soft and hard engineering
• What is the difference between hard
and soft engineering management
schemes?
• Does soft engineering appeal simply on
cost? Justify?
Integrated coastal zone management (ICZM)
& Shoreline Management Plans (SMP)
• This means that rather than sections of
the coast being managed by individual
towns or villages, they are managed as a
whole
• Realisation that acting in one place
affects other places along coastline i.e.
Mappleton.
• Due to sediments cells
Sediment Cells
Read p194 of Phillip Allan and
p194 Pearson and Holderness
photocopy (Oxford).
•
Produce a short paragraph
explaining what a sediment
cell is.
•
Produce a simple sketch
map of England showing
the 11 sediment cells.
•
How is an understanding
of sediment cells essential
if the principles of
shoreline management
plans are to work?
Shoreline Management Plans (SMP)
• In a SMP all local interest groups are consulted and
provide engineers with background information about
that stretch of coast – 4 options considered
• DO NOTHING – i.e. let existing defences collapse
• HOLD THE LINE i.e. keep the coastline where it is by
using hard engineering (Sheringham)
• ADVANCE THE LINE i.e. build coastal defences out
to sea i.e. artificial breakwaters (Dubai)
• RETREAT THE LINE i.e. allow the coast to erode
back to a defined line (South of Mapleton)
SMP
• Cost benefit analysis and environmental
impact analysis (EIA) carried out to
decide best option
• SMP can be valid for up to 50 years
• Unprotected areas eventually erode
inland and protected areas form small
headlands – alters shape of coast into
series of bays.
Case Study – Coastal defences on the
Holderness coast.
•
•
•
•
Identify coastal defences in place at three
locations along Holderness coast: Withernsea,
Mappleton and Flamborough
Describe how each method works and outline
advantages and disadvantages for each technique
suggesting where appropriate whether another
technique would be better.
Also use Google maps to find an area of the
Holderness coast where no defences are present
and to examine why this would be the case.
Use the sheet provided to study and evaluate the
coastal defences in place along the Holderness
coast.
Ref Oxford 198-201,
Plenary
• Arguments for and against coastline
retreat?
• Why are sediment cells so important in
coastal management?