Holderness Coast Case Study

Holderness Coast

Location:

Found in the North-East Coast of the UK. It spans between Flanborough Head and Spurn Point. Holderness Coast is Europe’s fastest eroding coastline.

Causes:

There are two main reasons why this area of coast is eroding so rapidly. The first is the result of the strong prevailing winds creating longshore drift that moves material south along the coastline. The second is that the cliffs are made of soft boulder clay left behind by the ice sheet which covered Northern Europe 100,000 years ago which erodes rapidly when saturated.

Impacts:

Socio-Economic:

- More than 30 villages have disappeared since Roman times.

- Property prices on this coastline have fallen sharply.

- 80,000m² of good quality farmland lost every year, which hugely affects farmers’ livelihood.

- Livestock dying due to falling over the cliff.

- Easington gas terminal is only 12 metres away from the sea due to Coastal Erosion (accounts for 25% of British Gas Supply).

- £2 million was spent at Mappleton to protect the coast in 1991.

Environmental:

- Some SSSI’s are threatened e.g. The Lagoons near Easington are part of an SSSI. It has a colony of over 1% of the British breeding population of ‘little terns’. The lagoons are separated from the sea by a strip of sand and shingle. Without this strip of eroding land, the lagoons will be destroyed.

Responses:

- Groynes created from boulders have been made in Mappleton, to protect the village and