Coastal Erosion

What is Coastal Erosion?

Within Geography, which covers maps, landforms, weather, climate, population and settlements: understand how our planet and people connect, this topic explains Coastal Erosion. Geography explains how places, people and natural processes connect, so each topic here combines a clear definition with a visual model.

Check that you can explain Coastal Erosion in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding Coastal Erosion helps you explain patterns on maps and in the news, and make reasoned decisions about places and environments.

Coastal Erosion in detail

Waves shape coastlines through erosion. Destructive waves are high and steep, with a strong backwash, and erode. The processes are hydraulic action, abrasion, attrition and solution, and they are strongest where waves are large, have a long fetch, and hit weak rock.

Features include cliffs and wave-cut platforms, caves, arches, stacks and stumps, formed in sequence on headlands where a crack widens into a cave, then an arch, which collapses to leave a stack, and the stack eventually collapses into a stump. Differences in rock hardness create headlands and bays. Mass movement such as slumping also shapes cliffs.

How the interactive helps you understand Coastal Erosion

Click a step, or use the Previous and Next buttons, to move through the sequence one stage at a time. Auto-play moves on for you.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of Coastal Erosion.

Real-life uses and examples

• Interpret a graph or map that shows Coastal Erosion and say what it suggests.
• Describe a real place where Coastal Erosion can be seen, using a map or photograph.
• Explain how Coastal Erosion affects people, jobs and land use in a region.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Mixing up cause, effect and consequence when you explain Coastal Erosion.
• Writing general statements without a named place or example.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.