IGCSE Geography / Coastal environments

Beaches, spits and bars revision notes

Edexcel International GCSE Geography (4GE1), chapter 2: Coastal environments, specification point 2.1c. Part of the full course.

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Constructive waves build beaches, while longshore drift carries material that can form spits and bars. Knowing how these landforms form helps you explain coastal deposition and identify them on maps and photographs.

More lessons in Coastal environments

• Waves and coastal erosion
• Longshore drift and coastal deposition
• Weathering and mass movement on the coast
• Headlands, bays, cliffs and wave-cut platforms
• Caves, arches, stacks and stumps
• Geology and the shape of the coast
• Vegetation, people and sea-level change
• Coastal ecosystems: coral reefs and mangroves
• Coastal ecosystems: sand dunes and salt marshes
• Inside one coastal ecosystem: the Sundarbans mangrove
• Coastal ecosystems under threat
• Case study: managing the mangrove
• Conflicts at the coast
• Why coasts flood
• Predicting and preventing coastal flooding
• Hard engineering at the coast
• Soft engineering and shoreline management plans
• Case study: coastal management in The Gambia
• Case study: coastal management in Sri Lanka
• Case study: coastal management in the UK
• Coastal fieldwork: collecting the data
• Coastal fieldwork: results, conclusions and evaluation