Geography Case Study: Adelaide's Beaches

There are many things that affect Henley beach naturally such as the wind and waves, sea grass loss, seabed instability, and the sea level rise. The wind and waves have a natural impact on the beach by the process of longshore drift. According to Adelaide’s Living Beach Strategies, during coastal storms, large quantities of sand can be eroded, causing considerable damage to near shore beach and dune areas (Department for Environment and Heritage, 2005, Adelaide’s Living Beaches, Government of South Australia, Adelaide, accessed on the 5/6/15) and this means that the sand has to be replenished artificially which is what we want to prevent. Another thing that affects the beach is seagrass loss and seabed instability which involves the vegetation

As one of Devon’s oldest seaside resorts near the mouth of the Teign estuary, Teignmouth is the home to many local residences and local tourism businesses. The shoreline flooding and erosion of Teignmouth has a negative impact on people’s life and the landscape of the resort town. The first sea walls built to protect the town in 1867, which was broken down by the strong sea wave and wind, leading to a terrible flooding of the town in 1908 (Environment Agency, 2015). Later, strong sea waves had toppled down the sea wall, and new sea walls were built again. The year of 1969 had witnessed the breakdown of the sea wall again, which made the Devon River Authority to reconstruct the 145-meter-long sea wall and built 7 groynes to maintain a higher beach level in 1972 (Environment Agency, 2015). In later

Does the impact of anthropogenic processes, such as dredging, and the environmental degradation it has caused in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park outweigh the exigency for shipping channels?

There is nothing better than breathing in fresh air, soaking your skin in the warm summer sun, and diving into the waters of a clear cool ocean. And while we sometimes think heading to the Caribbean or another location with natural tropical coastlines is the only way to experience such bliss, there are plenty of man-made beaches that are worthy of exploration. Let’s check out few artificial gems that have replicated nature’s awesomeness.

The beaches of South Carolina are a prized quality and possession to the state and its people as it provides beauty, enjoyment and the economic benefits of tourism year round. Due to storms, natural processes of sand movement and development, the beaches of South Carolina, specifically the Grand Strand beaches and local beaches of Sullivan’s Island and Folly Beach, are eroding at a rapid rate. Erosion is a natural process effected by sea level rise, storms and currents and many techniques have been used in the past to combat erosion issues that threaten to wash away beaches and homes in the process. Erosion preventative structures used in the past, such as jetties and seawalls, have proven to be even more damaging to beach erosion but

The evolution of measured beach volumes over the study period strongly suggests that the Gold Coast beaches are not able to withstand a powerful succession of extreme vents. The first high-wave event strongly weakened the beaches, which did not recover before the second high-wave event of a magnitude not unusual along the Gold Coast. However, in these two cases, the storms resulted in surprisingly high erosion rates. Data from a more in-depth investigation of Broadbeach, using video imagery, suggest that outer bar decay, resulting in a lack of protection of the sub-aerial beach, may explain this high erosion.

Climate change is proving to have a severe negative impact on our coastlines. Manly Beach is a very precious beach to Australians because of its physical, environmental, cultural, social and economic values. The NSW government and the local council are now acting to protect Manly Beach from further coastal erosion. If no action is taken, we may lose our beach totally and that would be disastrous to the people, the land and the ecosystem.

Coastal management is responding in many ways due to the response of individuals, groups and governments. Australia has many impactful issues as the coastline of Australia stretches over 60,000 kilometres. With two-thirds of Australia's population living near the coastline as the benefits of the beaches and the coastal breeze attract people to live near the coast. Coastal management issues occur, such as erosion and pollution. Many places in Australia have experienced some kind of devastating problems such as the South-east Queensland oil spill, erosion at Collaroy houses and. It has resulted Australia as a nation to come together and resolve the issues and overcome them efficiently and as quickly as possible.

Although benefiting the buildings and homes that they are built to protect, the drawback of jetties is that cause greater erosion further down the coast. This is because they act like a damn, holding the sand in place that would normally replenish these areas.

The coastal management programs are very important for many reasons such as, to protect homes and businesses from being damaged and even destroyed by coastal erosion or flooding. This report will be investigating social, political, economic and environmental the natural coastal processes which are currently taking place at Palm Beach, such as longshore drift and erosion and will also focus on the impact of human disruption to natural processes. The site that was chosen to investigate was Palm Beach on the Gold Coast. While the students were at the excursion they took note of the current states of vegetation, wind speeds, primary dune developments as well as longshore drift to assess the beach and to try and find a suitable management strategy for the future. The two proposals were, A: continue current costal management strategies in terms of the Beach Nourishment Program which results in sand being pumped onto the beach and B: Construct an Artificial Reef off the shoreline of Palm Beach to minimize the impact of beach erosion to the beach. These two proposals were then examined and evaluated against the criteria of social, political, environmental and economic

On the other hand sea walls are one of the most expensive forms of sea defence. A good example of this is the relatively recent process that Pevensey Bay has been through. Pevensey bay is a small sea side village resort with large number of properties directly on the beach. Furthermore, It is not just this community that is at risk. It was stated that “A permanent breach in the [beach] would result in a 50 square kilometre area behind the defences flooding at high tide. Over 10,000 properties, several caravan parks, important road and rail links would be affected, as would Pevensey Levels, an important ecological site that has Ramsar Convention status as a Wetland of International Importance.“(“PCDL - Pevensey Coastal Defence Ltd,” n.d.). This shows that this is indeed a high value site, one that requires an advanced and effective defence system.

Adelaide’s beaches are at an angle to prevailing winds and waves causing sand washing north from the southern beaches, resulting erosion of the beach, sand dunes and accumulating the northern beaches (Adelaide's Living Beaches: Management Cell 2, 2015) Pipeline transfer systems are effective to move granular material in long distances with minimal operational costs, this strategy involves dividing the Adelaide metropolitan coastline into series of management cells and using this transfer to recycle or backpass sand from north to south within some of these cells. (Adelaide's Living Beaches, 2015). Almost all the stakeholders are for this strategy as ‘using pipelines to pump sand from areas of accumulation to areas of erosion would be an effective

The task question I have chosen is ‘Investigate the reasons for varying approaches to coastal management’. The specific question I will be focusing on is ‘Should the coastal defences at Cuckmere Haven be retained?’ Initially I was interested in the discussion of future management

Big quantities of sand have either been put away and not used or removed from Glenelg beach due to development on the coast. Multiple Adelaide coasts have been built upon an extensive system of dunes on the coast or, alternatively, due to the need of providing land for housing and Adelaide airport, dunes were used to infill backswamps of the coast. Along the Lefevre Penisula, land was reclaimed to create the suburb of North

Semaphore is located just outside off Port Adelaide. Natural processes that affect Semaphore Beach are to create a breakwater along the coast of Semaphore, if the breakwater was in anyway successful it would eventually be turned into a permanent concrete structure. For years In Port Adelaide an environmental group (PAEPG) has been campaigned against the sand mining at Semaphore, It was creating problems for housing in the surrounding areas. (This info was published by Dylan Ferguson in 2003 about A Sand Mining problem that also effected sand dunes in the area). The picture on the side is a sky view map of Semaphore Beach.