East Yorkshire coastal erosion

This page is intended as an appendix to the sediment segmentation model and the migration chart.

Using wave angle approach data as a template, estimates of average sediment segment length together with the pace of migration can be applied to specific sections of the coast. These are arranged into sediment zones.

Values are the result of desktop calculation, though they are supported by examples in the migration chart.

Locations of monitoring profiles are available at data summary and coordinates (spreadsheet)

◀ smaller screens ▶

It may be seen that sediment increases in both length of segment and pace of migration as it departs Bridlington Bay (for convenience, the drift divide is placed at Profile 14, near Earls Dyke).

Once the coastline loses curvature, increments are very small and for some twenty-five kilometres or so there is little change. In the migration chart, sediment bodies become well defined with significant stretches of low beach contour between salients.

The inland curvature at the southern end of the coast is marked by a shortening of segments, and by slower movement. While values do not reduce to those of the northern curve, changes are more abrupt.

Original wave approach angle data on which the template is based was obtained, with permission of the authors, from:

Pye, K and Blott, S J (2015)
‘Spatial and temporal variations in soft-cliff erosion along the Holderness coast, East Riding of Yorkshire, UK’
Journal of Coastal Conservation, 19, 6, 785-808
abstract

Page prepared by Brian Williams in November 2018.