Coastal Landscapes - Coastal Management

  • 45% of England’s coast is buttressed with sea walls, groynes or artificial beaches
Hard Engineering:
  • Involves some type of building (using hard materials like wood and rock)
  • Blackpool spent £62 million on a sea wall and it is £3000 per metre to repair
  • Examples include: Groyne, Wood or steel piling, concrete walls, wooden revetment, recurves steel wall, Gabion, rip-rap.
Positives & Negatives of Hard Engineering:
Positives:
Negatives:
Protection against erosion so recession stops
Costs are expensive
Controls and reduces flooding so houses and towns are protected
Impacts the environment
Improves urban landscape
Interferes with sediment (starvation)
Socially sustainable
Unsightly
Needs repairing which is expensive

Soft Engineering:
  • Uses soft, natural resources such as sand, sand dunes or changing cliffs and land
  • Examples include: Beach nourishment, cliff regrading and drainage, dune stabilisation.
Positives & Negatives of Soft Engineering:
Positives:
Negatives:
Often cheaper
Not effective enough
More natural looking (amenity value)
Requires natural material on land which might not be there
Better for the environment
Could still erode
Fewer ‘knock on’ effects down the coast
Needs constant management
Allows investment in other areas where hard engineering is needed
Socially less accepted
Who Manages The UK Coastlines:
  1. Government: Provide overall funding for coastal defence works
  2. Environment Agency: Scientists who decide what defences are needed
  3. Private Companies: Engineering firms paid to complete the work
  4. Local Stakeholders: They are involved in the decisions and requirement of defences.
  5. National Trust: Environmentalist who put pressure on bodies to care for ecosystems 
    Hard Engineering Types:
    Blackpool’s Sea Wall
    Advantages
    Disadvantages
    Reduces erosion
    Very expensive
    Interacts with people
    Eyesore
    Allows for easy access to beach
    Needs constant maintenance
    Disrupts people who being built


    Hornsea’s Rip-Rap
    Advantages
    Disadvantages
    Allows new habitats to form
    Blocks access to the beach
    Reduces erosion
    Allows some erosion behind the defence
    Not an eyesore and works with the coastal zone


    Mappleton’s Rock Groyne
    Advantages
    Disadvantages
    Protection of erosion
    Sediment starvation may occur
    Deposition may occur instead
    Allows some erosion behind the defence
    Recession retreat will occur much quicker


    Offshore Breakwater - Norfolk
    Advantages
    Disadvantages
    Allows the beach to be left as it is
    Eyesore
    Buffers waves
    Sediment starvation can occur
    Reduces energy of the waves
    Expensive to maintain


    Revetments
    Advantages
    Disadvantages
    Acts as a flood defence
    Expensive
    Buffers wave
    Some erosion can occur
    Reduces energy of wave
    Deposition can occur behind it
    Soft Engineering Types:
    Beach Nourishment
    Advantages
    Disadvantages
    Improves beach for tourists
    Expensive to maintain
    Buffers waves
    Damages wildlife and ecosystems
    Reduces sub-aerial processes from occurring
    Reduces erosion, does not stop it.


    Sand Dunes - Formby
    Advantages
    Disadvantages
    Improves beach for tourists/doesn’t ruin one
    Expensive to maintain - fences
    Creates new habitats
    Cannot protect the coast when there is a big storm
    Reduces erosion, does not stop it.


    Cliff Regrading & Drainage
    Advantages
    Disadvantages
    Cheap to implement
    Expensive to maintain
    Buffers waves
    Damages wildlife and ecosystems
    Reduces sub-aerial processes from occurring
    Reduces erosion, does not stop it.

    Summary:
  • Hard and Soft engineering options are available to manage coasts
  • In the UK, the key players include the government, the Environment Agency, local residents, farmers and businesses.
  • Hard engineering is the most effective to stop erosion and flooding for high value land, but it is also the most expensive, damaging for environment and disruptive to sediment movement.
  • Soft engineering is generally cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and less impacting, but it is less viable for urban coasts and therefore socially and practically not always possible (erosion and flooding risk!)
  • In reality, both hard and soft are needed for a holistic approach
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