Coastal landscapes flashcards

Coastal landscapes are shaped by the interaction of land and sea through a range of processes. Students must understand how waves are formed and how their energy drives erosion, transportation and deposition along coastlines. Erosional processes such as hydraulic action, abrasion, attrition and solution create distinctive landforms including headlands and bays, cliffs, wave-cut platforms, caves, arches and stacks. Transportation processes, including longshore drift, move sediment along the coast, leading to depositional landforms such as beaches, spits, bars and tombolos. Students should also understand how human activity and hard or soft engineering strategies are used to manage coastal erosion and flooding, weighing up the costs and benefits of different approaches. Physical factors such as rock type, fetch and prevailing wind direction all influence how rapidly a coastline changes.

1. Card 1

   What is the difference between a constructive and a destructive wave?

   Constructive waves are low, gentle and deposit material; destructive waves are tall, powerful and erode the coast. Destructive waves have a stronger backwash than swash.

2. Card 2

   What is hydraulic action?

   Hydraulic action is when the force of waves compresses air into cracks in rock, widening them over time and breaking the rock apart. No sediment is needed for this process.

3. Card 3

   What is abrasion at the coast?

   Abrasion is when waves hurl sand, pebbles and other sediment against a cliff face, wearing it away like sandpaper. It is often the most powerful form of coastal erosion.

4. Card 4

   What is longshore drift?

   Longshore drift is the movement of sediment along a coastline. Waves approach at an angle due to prevailing wind, swashing sediment diagonally, then the backwash pulls it straight back down the beach.

5. Card 5

   Describe the sequence of landforms from a headland to a stack.

   Erosion creates a cave in a headland, which deepens into an arch. The arch roof collapses, leaving an isolated pillar of rock called a stack, which erodes further into a stump.

6. Card 6

   How does a wave-cut platform form?

   Waves erode a wave-cut notch at the base of a cliff. The cliff above becomes unstable and collapses. Over time, repeated collapse leaves a flat rocky surface called a wave-cut platform.

7. Card 7

   What is a spit and how does it form?

   A spit is a ridge of sand or shingle extending from the coast into the sea. It forms where longshore drift carries sediment past a bend in the coastline, depositing it in calmer water.

8. Card 8

   What is the difference between hard engineering and soft engineering at the coast?

   Hard engineering uses artificial structures such as sea walls and groynes to resist the sea. Soft engineering works with natural processes, for example beach nourishment or managed retreat.

9. Card 9

   What is fetch and why does it matter?

   Fetch is the distance of open water over which wind blows to generate a wave. A longer fetch produces more powerful waves with greater erosional energy, increasing the rate of coastal change.

10. Card 10

    How do headlands and bays form?

    Where bands of hard and soft rock meet the sea, softer rock erodes faster to form bays. Harder rock erodes more slowly and juts out as headlands, which then concentrate wave energy.

11. Card 11

    What is managed retreat and when might it be used?

    Managed retreat involves allowing the sea to flood low-lying land, creating natural habitats. It is used where the cost of hard engineering outweighs the economic value of the land being protected.

12. Card 12

    What is attrition as a coastal process?

    Attrition is when rocks and pebbles carried by waves collide with each other, gradually breaking into smaller, smoother, more rounded fragments. It reduces sediment size rather than eroding the cliff.

• Many students confuse abrasion with attrition, not realising that abrasion wears away the cliff face using sediment as a tool, whereas attrition only reduces the size of the sediment particles themselves.
• Students often describe a bar and a spit as the same landform, but a spit is attached to the land at one end and extends into open water, while a bar stretches all the way across a bay.
• A common exam error is to say that destructive waves deposit material and constructive waves erode the coast, when in fact it is the opposite: destructive waves erode and constructive waves deposit.

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