Coastal Protection Report

Introduction

My geographical investigation involved a study of different methods of coastal protection around a small part of the coastline in South West Cumbria and Barrow-in-Farness. This coastline was chosen as it displays a variety of different coastal defences in a relatively small geographical area. To do this we used a standardised coastal protection record sheet to investigate 3 possible hypotheses.

Hypotheses

The 3 possible hypotheses are:

  1. The more expensive the defence system the better the structural effectiveness and the more it is aesthetically pleasing.
  2. The higher value for land the more amounts spent.
  3. The more effective sea defence systems are, the less aesthetically pleasing they are.

Method

To obtain our research data we used a stratified sampling method. We decided not to use a random sample method by using random grid references of the area as the locations selected may not have been in a coastal situation and as a result not relevant to the study. This sample method was chosen because it has a great advantage of choosing variables which might occur if we had used a random and wide ranging sample method.

This is where sites were selected based on previous visits to this part of the coastline. We chose this area because it had a variety of different sea defence systems of different ages and effectiveness. At each research site we used a detail recording sheet which looked at – geology, nature of beach, current land use, nature of erosion, and details of existing and past defences. We also used an index to analyse the structural effectiveness and the aesthetic effectiveness on a scale of 1-10. In the field an annotated sketch was used to record the coastal defence system and we also took photos. The results were then recorded in a table from the 6 sites visited. The results were as follows:

Results

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Representation of data

The above graph proves that the more money spent on the sea defence systems the higher the structural effectiveness. However, there is one site that does not follow this pattern; at Moat Farm where there are gabions that cost merely £200 per metre have a very high structural effective rate of 8. It also shows that the most effective sea wall is also the most expensive. This is located at North Walney, proving my hypothesis to be correct again.

This graph shows that there is a definite ...

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