IGCSE Geography / Coastal environments

Case study: coastal management in the UK

Edexcel International GCSE Geography (4GE1), chapter 2: Coastal environments, specification point CS2, 2.3c. Part of the full course.

Read the revision notes · IGCSE Geography past papers

The Holderness coast erodes quickly because its cliffs are made of soft boulder clay, and coastal defences can affect places further along the coast. Shoreline management plans choose how each stretch is managed, with Medmerry showing how managed retreat can protect people while creating new habitat.

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
• Beaches, spits and bars
• 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
• Coastal fieldwork: collecting the data
• Coastal fieldwork: results, conclusions and evaluation