Coastal Management

Coastal Management

1. Hard Engineering management

   • Groynes
   • Recurved sea wall
   • Revetments
   • Rip-Rap
   • Gabion

2. Soft Enegineering management

   • Beach Nourishment
   • Beach re-profiling
   • Dune Regeneration
   • Developing natural defences of coral reefs and mangroves

3. Advance the line

4. Do nothing

5. Hold the line

6. Retreat the line

7. Abbotts Hall Farm, Essex

   • Southeast England is experiencing eustatic rise and isostatic sinking
   • Sea level is rising at a rate of about 6mm per year
   • Pressure on stretches of low-lying coast
   • 40% of salt marshes have been lost to coastal squeeze over the last 25 years.
   • Mudflats and salt marshes are important feeding and nesting areas
     • Being eroded at a rate of 2m per year
   • On Blackwater estuary
   • A managed retreat scheme was implemented in 2002
   • Five breaches were made in the embankments, allowing sea water to cover some 80 hectares
   • Essex Wildlife Trust in 1999 was keen to work with the Environmental agency to try and regrow coastal marshes
   • Counterwalls were constructed at each end to ensure neighbouring towns were not flooded

8. New Coastal management strategies recognise three needs:

   • To ensure that the strategies are sustainable
   • To take a more holistic view and to abandon the old piecemeal approach to coastal management which tackled one issue at a time
   • To encourage cooperation between the various coastal stakeholders

9. Shoreline management plans

   • First made public in 1995
   • Sustainable
   • Compatiable with adjacent coastal areas
   • Takes account of natural coastal processes as well as the needs of people