Main question

How do coastal sediment cells operate ?

Questions

Study Resource A (1). Define what is meant by a coastal sediment cell.

Use Resources A and B to describe the sediment budget pattern along the east coast of England.
Suggest reasons for the patterns identified in 2a).

Using Resource C calculate the following:

Total sediment deposited at Spurn Head.
Total sediment deposited offshore and on the Lincoln coast.

Resource A

1. England and Wales’s main sediment cells.

2. Sub-cells within sediment cells 2 – East Coast of England. (2a Flamborough Head to Spurn Head; 2b Humber Estuary; 2c Donna Nook to Gibraltar Point:

Source: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/11209/7/150YRS.pdf

© Copyright : This item was submitted to Loughborough’s Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) by the author and is made available under the Creative Commons Licence.

Citation:MONTREUIL, A-L. and BULLARD, J.E., 2012. A 150-year record of coastline dynamics within a sediment cell: Eastern England. Geomorphology, 179, pp. 168 - 185.

Resource B

Background

Sediment input and output from a series of beaches has been measured over a number of years (See Table) to identify cell sediment budgets.
2a - mainly cliffs of weaker material (many glacial / fluvioglacial deposits). 2b - Humber Estuary, saltmarsh, Spurn Head sand spit, mud flats. 2c - low sandy coast, many sand dunes.
The main direction of the waves - from the North East.
An estimated 1,000,000 m³ of sediment is eroded annually from the Holderness cliffs (2a)

Location	Annual Sediment Budget (m3). Negative figures denote a net loss
Easington	-669,500
North Spurn	-1,500
Donna Nook	499000
Saltfleetby	412000
Theddlethorpe	476000
Skegness	215000

Source: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/11209/7/150YRS.pdf

© Copyright : This item was submitted to Loughborough’s Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) by the author and is made available under the Creative Commons Licence.

Citation:MONTREUIL, A-L. and BULLARD, J.E., 2012. A 150-year record of coastline dynamics within a sediment cell: Eastern England. Geomorphology, 179, pp. 168 - 185.

Resource C

It is estimated that 76,450,000 m³ of sediment has been lost from the Holderness coast over the last hundred years. Roughly 3% of this was deposited on Spurn Head tongue. The remainder was deposited in other parts of the sediment cell, either offshore or further south on the Lincoln coast.