Geography - Walton on the naze

Authors Avatar
A.Q.A

Geography

Coursework

An investigation into the variation of beach characteristics on a managed and unmanaged section of coast at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex.

Applied Understanding

For our Geography Case Study, we visited Walton-on-the-Naze.

The aim of our study is to find out the differences of beach characteristics between managed and unmanaged sections of the coast at Walton-on-the-Naze.

Walton-on-the-Naze is a coastal resort, located approximately 10 miles from Frinton-on-Sea.

I am interested in studying this topic, because I have studied coastal processes in my GCSE course, and want to see how far human changes can affect natural processes. Our visit to Walton-on-the-Naze came on 21st May 2008.

Going at this time, at the beginning of the summer, made it particularly easier, to make notes and have our experiments done. There would also be fewer tourists, resulting in less interference in our experiments, thus helping to record results more accurately.

Coastal erosion is the wearing away of land or the removal of beach or dune sediments by wave action, tidal currents, wave currents, or drainage.

Waves generated by storms, wind, or fast moving motor craft, cause coastal erosion, which may take the form of long-term losses of coastal sediments and rocks, or merely the temporary redistribution of coastal sediments; erosion in one location may result in accretion deposition nearby. It may be caused by hydraulic action, abrasion, and corrosion.

On rocky coasts, coastal erosion results in dramatic rock formations in areas where the coastline contains rock layers or fracture zones with different resistances to erosion. Softer areas, such as those found at Walton-on-the-Naze become eroded much faster than harder ones, thus the need for sea defences on parts of the coastline.

I Predict that further down the beach, the less sediments there will be, the amount of sediments will vary between the managed and unmanaged section. I believe there will be more sediment on the managed section because groynes will trap sand and rock material there.

A reason for this was the process of long-shore drift - which is interrupted on the managed section. As sediment and fine sands will be trapped here, less of this material will reach the unmanaged section and therefore beach levels are likely to be lower there. Hydraulic action is a form of erosion, it is the sheer weight and force of water acting upon the sediments, this is important to my investigation as after we concluded our experiment, the tide came in, acting upon the sediments. All these factors will contribute to the characteristics of both sides of the beaches.
Join now!


Erosion occurs due to wave erosion at the base of the cliff but also due to sub - aerial erosion. This happens because the three top layers are saturated by rain water, however as water cannot go through the layer of London clay at the bottom, as it is impermeable, and the water seeps out of the cliff, so the material then slumps onto the beach.

I think this will mean larger sediment size on the unmanaged beach due to mass movement there, and the fact that a lot of the fine sand will get trapped ...

This is a preview of the whole essay