Coastal and Glacial Case Studies
Spec mapping (AQA 7037): Paper 1 (Physical), §3.1.3 Coastal systems and landscapes AND §3.1.4 Glacial systems and landscapes — the case-study requirement: detailed study of a glaciated upland landscape and a coastal landscape to illustrate landscape evolution, human use and management, evaluated. This synoptic lesson welds the whole course together, requiring you to deploy located, quantified evidence and to evaluate it against systems, sustainability and climate-change criteria. It draws on every preceding lesson and rehearses the extended-response skills the exam rewards. Assessment objectives: AO1 (located factual knowledge), AO2 (applying process and systems understanding to real places), AO3 (manipulating case-study data and reaching evaluated judgements).
The examiner's distinction between a middling and a top-band case-study answer is not the amount of detail recalled but the use to which it is put: a Top-band answer selects evidence to support an argument, quantifies it, links landforms to the processes and systems that made them, evaluates winners and losers, and reaches a justified judgement — exactly the moves modelled throughout this course. Below, two anchor case studies are developed at depth (a glaciated upland, the Lake District; and a coastal landscape, Holderness), supported by contrasting examples (the Jurassic Coast, Svalbard, the Alps), and the lesson closes with a full banded 20-mark essay.
Case Study 1: The Holderness Coast — Rapid Coastal Erosion (the coastal anchor)
The Holderness coast is the most rapidly eroding coastline in Europe and is essential knowledge for AQA A-Level Geography.
Location and Context
- Stretches 61 km from Flamborough Head (chalk headland) to Spurn Head (shingle spit)
- Located on the east coast of Yorkshire within Sediment Cell 1
- The cliffs are composed of glacial till (boulder clay) deposited during the Devensian glaciation (c. 115,000–11,700 years ago)
Rates and Scale of Erosion
- Average cliff retreat: 1.8 m per year (some sections exceed 5 m in individual storm events)
- Since Roman times: approximately 4 km of land lost and over 30 villages destroyed
- Approximately 3.4 million m³ of sediment eroded annually
- The village of Skipsea has lost its castle site to the sea; Owthorne has retreated over 1.5 km since mediaeval times
Causes of Rapid Erosion
- Weak geology — glacial till is unconsolidated, crumbles easily and is rapidly eroded by hydraulic action
- Narrow beaches — the till produces mainly fine sediment (silt, clay) that is transported offshore rather than forming a protective beach
- High wave energy — exposed to North Sea waves with a fetch of up to 800 km from the north-east
- Sub-aerial processes — rainfall saturates the clay, triggering rotational slumps and mudflows. Freeze-thaw in winter adds to cliff destabilisation
- Longshore drift — removes approximately 500,000 m³ of sediment southward each year, preventing beach accumulation
- Limited foreshore protection — no durable wave-cut platform develops in soft till
- Rising sea levels — estimated at 2–3 mm per year in this area, increasing wave attack on cliff bases
Management Approaches
| Settlement | Strategy | Details | Outcome |
|---|
| Bridlington | Hold the Line | Sea wall, groynes, rock armour | Town protected; key economic centre |
| Hornsea | Hold the Line | Concrete sea wall, timber groynes | Beach maintained; downdrift erosion accelerated |
| Mappleton | Hold the Line | Two rock groynes, rock armour (1991, £2m) | Village protected; erosion at Great Cowden increased from 2.5 to 4 m/year |
| Withernsea | Hold the Line | Sea wall, groynes | Settlement protected but terminal groyne effect |
| Easington Gas Terminal | Hold the Line | Rock armour revetment | Critical infrastructure protected |
| Between settlements | No Active Intervention | No defences | Agricultural land lost; compensation issues |
| Spurn Head | Managed Retreat | Road abandoned after 2013 storm surge | Natural processes allowed |
Key Evaluation Points
- Hard engineering at individual settlements disrupts longshore drift, creating sediment starvation downdrift
- The SMP2 for Holderness adopts "No Active Intervention" for most of the coast — only major settlements are defended
- The estimated cost of defending the entire coast: over £500 million — far exceeding the value of land at risk
- Raises significant social justice and ethical issues: rural communities and farmsteads receive no protection
- The sediment eroded from Holderness feeds beaches at Spurn Head and contributes to salt marsh development in the Humber Estuary — protecting Holderness would starve these systems.
Why Holderness is the coastal anchor. It uniquely combines, in one accessible frontage, almost every concept in §3.1.3: a complete sediment cell (Cell 1) traceable from a single source (the till cliffs) through a single transfer (southward longshore drift) to a single sink (Spurn/Humber); the fastest soft-rock retreat in Europe (~1.8 m yr⁻¹, locally >4 m yr⁻¹ where defences starve the downdrift coast); a managed/unmanaged contrast that makes the terminal-groyne effect visible (Mappleton→Great Cowden); the full SMP policy spread (Hold-the-Line at Bridlington/Easington, No Active Intervention along most of the coast, managed retreat at Spurn); and acute environmental-justice and climate dimensions. It is also a paraglacial coast — the cliffs are glacial till, so Holderness is the single cleanest place to demonstrate the §3.1.4→§3.1.3 inheritance link (glacial material consumed by marine process). For an exam, this means almost any coastal question — on systems, processes, rates, landforms, management or sustainability — can be answered with Holderness evidence, which is why mastering it deeply is worth more than thin knowledge of many sites.
Case Study 2: The Dorset Jurassic Coast — World Heritage Coastline
The Dorset and East Devon coast was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001, recognised for its outstanding geological interest.
Geological Significance
- The coastline spans 154 km from Exmouth (Devon) to Studland Bay (Dorset)
- Exposes rocks from three geological periods spanning 185 million years: Triassic (252–201 Ma), Jurassic (201–145 Ma) and Cretaceous (145–66 Ma)
- Walking from west to east is literally "walking through time"
Key Landforms
Lulworth Cove:
- A classic example of a cove formed on a concordant coast
- Resistant Portland limestone forms the narrow entrance (breached by the sea along a fault)
- Behind this, softer Wealden clays and Greensand have been eroded into a circular bay
- Chalk forms the back wall of the cove
- Demonstrates differential erosion and concordant coastal structure
Durdle Door:
- A natural limestone arch formed in Portland limestone
- Waves exploited a weakness (fault or joint) in the headland
- Hydraulic action and abrasion eroded a cave through the headland, creating the arch
- The arch will eventually collapse to form a stack
Old Harry Rocks:
- Chalk stacks and stumps at the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast (Studland)
- Old Harry is a stack; Old Harry's Wife collapsed to a stump in 1896
- Demonstrates the headland erosion sequence: cave → arch → stack → stump
- The chalk headland of Ballard Down continues to retreat
Chesil Beach:
- A tombolo connecting the Isle of Portland to the mainland
- 28 km long, up to 14 m high and 200 m wide
- Composed of flint and chert pebbles that show longshore grading — pebble size increases from west (pea-sized at West Bay) to east (fist-sized at Portland)
- The mechanism of this grading remains debated: wave energy, longshore drift, and storm sorting all contribute
Management Challenges
- Balancing geological conservation (maintaining natural processes, allowing the erosion that exposes the very fossils and structures the WHS protects) with protecting settlements (Lyme Regis, West Bay, Swanage).
- Lyme Regis has invested over £30 million in coastal defences since the 1990s — sea walls, rock armour, beach nourishment and major cliff stabilisation (drainage and piling to control the pore-pressure-driven landslides in the local clays).
- World Heritage status restricts the type of defences — a natural appearance must be maintained, ruling out the most obtrusive hard engineering.
- Tourism generates of the order of £100 million yr⁻¹ for the local economy.
Evaluation — the conservation paradox. The Jurassic Coast crystallises a tension absent at Holderness: here erosion is the asset. Active cliff recession continually exposes fresh fossils and rock sections, so over-defending the coast would destroy its scientific value by halting the very process that reveals the geology. Yet the same erosion (and the pore-pressure landslides of the clay-rich frontages) threatens settlements and the tourism economy that depends on access. Management must therefore protect settlements pinpoint (Lyme Regis) while allowing erosion along the open WHS frontage — a place-by-place compromise that mirrors the systems-led, selective approach of the whole course, but with the unusual twist that the "do nothing" policy is justified on conservation as well as cost grounds. It is the clearest example in Britain of management where allowing the natural process is the conservation goal, not merely the cheap option.
Case Study 3: Svalbard Glaciers — Arctic Glaciation
Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean (74–81°N) with approximately 57% glacier cover.
Glacial Characteristics
- Over 2,100 individual glaciers cover approximately 34,000 km²
- Most glaciers are polythermal — cold at the surface and margins but warm-based in the interior
- Many are tidewater glaciers that calve icebergs into the sea
- The Equilibrium Line Altitude (ELA) varies from 200 m (in the north) to 700 m (in the south)
Mass Balance Trends
- Most Svalbard glaciers have shown negative mass balance since the 1960s
- Average mass loss: approximately −0.4 m water equivalent per year
- Some glaciers have retreated by several kilometres since the Little Ice Age maximum (c. 1900)
- The rate of retreat has accelerated since the 1990s due to Arctic amplification of global warming
- Arctic temperatures have risen at approximately twice the global average rate
Surging Glaciers
Svalbard contains a high proportion of surge-type glaciers (estimated 30–90% of all glaciers):
- Surges occur with a periodicity of approximately 50–500 years
- During a surge, velocity increases by a factor of 10–100
- Example: Tunabreen glacier surged in 2003–2005, advancing approximately 2 km
- Example: Nathorstbreen surged in 2009, one of the largest surges recorded in Svalbard
Significance
- Svalbard glaciers serve as sensitive indicators of Arctic amplification — the Arctic is warming at roughly twice the global mean rate, so its polythermal glaciers respond early and visibly.
- Meltwater contributes to global sea-level rise (~0.06 mm yr⁻¹ from Svalbard alone), connecting a remote ice mass to coastal flood risk worldwide — including the UK coasts of this course.
- Changing glacial conditions reshape Arctic ecosystems (polar-bear and seabird habitat) and human activity (shipping, resource access as ice retreats).
- Ny-Ålesund hosts an international research community monitoring these changes — Svalbard functions as a "natural laboratory" for the cryosphere's response to warming.
Why Svalbard matters synoptically. Its polythermal glaciers (warm-based interiors, cold-based margins) and its high proportion of surge-type glaciers make it a living illustration of the thermal-regime and surge theory of lesson 6, while its rapid mass loss and tidewater calving exemplify the dynamic, non-mass-balance retreat mechanisms that drive ice-sheet-scale sea-level concern. It thereby links the glacial-process half of the course directly to the coastal-flooding and management half — the warming that thins Svalbard's ice is the sea-level rise that pushes Holderness and the Humber further into sediment deficit.
Case Study 4: The Lake District — Glaciated Upland of England (the glacial anchor)
The Lake District National Park is the finest example of glaciated scenery in England and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2017.
Evidence of Glaciation
The Lake District was heavily glaciated during the Devensian (last glacial period, ending c. 11,700 years ago). Ice covered the area to a depth of over 800 m in places, with ice flowing radially outward from the central mountains.
Key Landforms
| Landform | Location | Features |
|---|
| Corries | Red Tarn (Helvellyn), Blea Water (High Street) | Classic armchair hollows with tarns; north/east-facing |
| Arêtes | Striding Edge (Helvellyn), Sharp Edge (Blencathra) | Knife-edged ridges between corries |
| Glacial troughs | Borrowdale, Langdale, Wasdale | U-shaped valleys with flat floors and steep sides |
| Ribbon lakes | Windermere, Ullswater, Wastwater | Long, narrow lakes in overdeepened valleys |
| Truncated spurs | Numerous examples in main valleys | Triangular cliff faces where interlocking spurs were cut |
| Hanging valleys | Taylor Gill Force, Sour Milk Gill | Waterfalls where tributary valleys are elevated above the main trough |
| Roches moutonnées | Numerous in valley floors | Indicate radial ice flow from the centre |
| Drumlins | Eden Valley, Kent Valley | Streamlined hills of till on the lowland margins |
| Moraines | Terminal moraines at valley exits | Mark the maximum extent of valley glaciers |
Wastwater — England's Deepest Lake
- Depth: 76 m (the deepest lake in England)
- Occupies an overdeepened glacial trough
- Dammed by a terminal moraine and alluvial fan at its western end
- The surrounding scree slopes (The Screes) are among the finest in England — talus deposits from post-glacial freeze-thaw weathering
- Wasdale Head (at the eastern end) shows a classic U-shaped valley profile with hanging valleys above
Post-Glacial (Paraglacial) Modification
The Lake District is polygenetic: the glacial landforms have been reworked since deglaciation by paraglacial and present-day processes, so the landscape you see is glacial plus its post-glacial modification.
- Scree (talus) accumulation — freeze–thaw shattering of the over-steepened trough walls that the ice had buttressed; The Screes above Wastwater are the classic example of paraglacial slope adjustment (a glacial wall failing once the supporting ice was gone).
- Alluvial fans and deltas — built where tributary streams enter the main troughs, locally damming or subdividing lakes.
- Lake infilling — ribbon lakes are slowly filling with sediment; Buttermere and Crummock Water were once a single lake, now divided by the delta of Sail Beck — a visible rate of post-glacial landscape change.
- Peat and soil/vegetation development — ecological succession from bare deglaciated rock to today's mosaic of grassland, heath, bog and woodland.
Human Use and Management of the Glaciated Upland
The same glacial landforms that make the Lake District spectacular also generate competing demands and management challenges — the human dimension the spec requires for the upland case: