IGCSE Geography / Coastal environments

Coastal ecosystems: sand dunes and salt marshes revision notes

Edexcel International GCSE Geography (4GE1), chapter 2: Coastal environments, specification point 2.2a. Part of the full course.

Watch the video lesson · IGCSE Geography past papers

Sand dunes are built when wind moves dry beach sand, while salt marshes build up as tides deposit mud in sheltered water. Knowing what each ecosystem needs and how it changes helps you explain coastal processes and identify their features.

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
• 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