Evaluation of Coastal Management at Swanage

J.Hutchings (Y9) has written an evaluation of coastal management at Swanage. Click on the image to enlarge it, then read the evaluation underneath.

Do you agree with his assesment of the current strategies?
Would you manage it differently?
Would you manage it at all?

(Comment Below or tweet @bsgeography)

Evaluation

Judging by the fact that the officials in charge of the area (described on annotated map) have a main focus of ensuring a sustainable future for the coastal area of Swanage, I think that there is little to be done regarding changes.  It is said that plans dealing with the future of the coast are currently being reviewed, processed and produced, but in the meantime they are continuing to allow the defences already set up to prevent erosion getting out of hand.

Regarding the defences themselves, however, I think that a different approach would have been more adequate.  Having a long system of groynes stretching across some of the coast is good, as it helps to stabilise the beach and keep it in one piece.  The sea walls do their job, but it doesn’t quite meet the needs of a sustainable balance.  They are particularly expensive (one of the most expensive coastal defence concepts) and are also unappealing to the public.  While it may meet the needs of the environment, it fails to do the same socially and economically.

There are no ideal options when it comes to social sustainability, as even though there may be more suitable solutions in terms of appearance, none contribute significantly enough to make it worthwhile.  However, perhaps a series of rip-raps or gabions could have been used, as these are less expensive than sea walls and still manage to absorb the waves’ energy relatively successfully.

Lost Continent Discovered

·         21^st February 2013: Scientists have discovered huge pieces of a continent from millions of years ago in the Indian Ocean.

According to the “National Geoscience”: scientists from England, South Africa, Norway and Germany have discovered land which is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and has a width of 25- 30 km from 50-80 million years ago from a continent called Rodinia.

Scientists think that thisland was removed as a result of volcanic explosions which broke the land off from the main continent. Then gigantic waves caused by earth quakes sent the island to the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Scientists named this piece “Mauritia”.

Scientists say that the continents today are all detached from Rodinia and made today’s world in the last 1 billion years.

It is 2 thousand km away from Africa’s southeast, in the 115 islands of the Seychelles and the island of Maritius. While scientists were investigating the sand pieces there, they discovered that the pieces belonged to a volcanic explosion which had happened 9 million years ago.

According to the Norwegian scientists, the pieces of the sand which they took the sample from Seychelles include Zirconium. They thought the Zirconium in the sand came from another piece which had met the bottom of the Indian Ocean as a result of the volcano and the waves.

With sonar and seismic submarines, it has been proved that there was this land with a width of 25- 30 km under the Indian Ocean.

By N. Aslanoba (y9)

2 amazing coastal landforms

The description below and pictures were researched at the start of our current year 9 course. Could you name them or mention some of the types of erosion involved?

One of the most interesting things about coasts is what the sea sculpts out of the rock. When you get cliffs where the sea is, then that is where the sea does its work. There have been pictures where the sea has sculpted something out of the cliff and it creates an amazing picture! An example of this is the pictures at the bottom. Somehow in the picture on the left the ground is sort of floating because all of the rock under it has been eroded by the water and it creates an amazing sight when you see rock floating. In the picture on the right it shows how hard that piece of rock is because it’s the last bit of rock around. This is because all the rest has been eroded which shows that all the rest were softer than that rock.

 

T Hammond, yr 9

Wave causes and types

The work below is an excellent effort from the start of our current year 9 work:

We use the coast for many things and also we go there for the pleasure of it all. We use it for energy e.g: big wind farms as it gets very windy at the coast and other reusable energy and also solar panels (for the sunnier places in the world). The subject I will be talking about today is a particular feature at the coast that people look at for pleasure and that is waves. Waves can hypnotise people for hours on end just watching the beauty of the waves breaking, crashing and the sounds they make and of course the surfing side of it. There is so much to talk about with waves and the details which I shall go into now.

Waves

Waves are created by friction of the wind when it’s blowing over the surface of the water usually far out sea. The wave gets pushed into the direction of the wind creating a swell which then creates the actual wave. The wave picks up so much energy from the wind and the friction it causes that it’s at high speed out at sea until it hits land or it just loses its energy because the wind might stop. A wave is affected mostly by the strength of the wind and the longer it blows for. When the wave starts getting close to land, the more shallow it gets, the wave starts to slow down and the wave starts to curl like an arc (that’s the perfect time for someone to catch a wave with a surfboard). There is so much more to see under a wave than above as there’s a whole cycle. The whole wave is rotating forwards like a spinning cylinder very fast. An ordinary wave is called a constructive wave which is when it deposits sand and other materials to make more land. Another kind of wave that can be caused is a destructive wave which is caused by more powerful winds like storms out at sea. This means more friction is caused by a more powerful wind meaning that the waves will be rougher. When the wave hits land, it can be very tall and has a short wave length unlike constructive waves which have a long wave length. Destructive waves also have a very strong back wash which erodes the beach. Some waves can get extremely big. The biggest wave ever recorded was 1740ft

As you can see the wave activity underneath.

By C Webber, yr 9