Coastal Landscapes in the UK | AQA GCSE Geography (8035)
Coastal Landscapes in the UK
- 71 questions
- 5 subtopics
- Paper 1
- Paper 1
Coastal Landscapes in the UK is examined in Paper 1, Living with the physical environment.
It covers waves and coastal processes: weathering, mass movement, erosion, transport and deposition, coastal landforms of erosion and deposition, Identifying landforms on a stretch of UK coastline and coastal management: hard and soft engineering, and a UK scheme.
Sample questions from Coastal Landscapes in the UK
Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.
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Waves and coastal processes: weathering, mass movement, erosion, transport and deposition
What is mechanical weathering on a coast, and which type is most common?
Show the answer
It is the breaking up of rock into fragments with no change to its chemistry, most often freeze-thaw, where water in a crack freezes, expands and prises the rock apart. -
Waves and coastal processes: weathering, mass movement, erosion, transport and deposition
What is abrasion at the coast?
Show the answer
Waves pick up sand, shingle and pebbles and hurl them at the cliff face, so the loose material scrapes and grinds the rock away like sandpaper. -
Coastal landforms of erosion and deposition
Explain how a cliff retreats and leaves a wave cut platform behind it.
Show the answer
Waves cut a notch into the base of the cliff between the tide marks until the rock above overhangs and collapses, and this is repeated so the cliff moves steadily inland. What is left where the cliff once stood is a gently sloping rocky ledge, exposed at low tide. -
Coastal landforms of erosion and deposition
Why does the end of a spit often curve, and what develops in the water behind it?
Show the answer
A change in the prevailing wind or wave direction curls the tip landwards into a recurved hook, and the sheltered water behind the ridge fills with mud and silt that is colonised by plants to become salt marsh. -
Identifying landforms on a stretch of UK coastline
How would you recognise a spit on a map?
Show the answer
As a narrow finger of sand or shingle attached to the land at one end and reaching out across a river mouth or bay, often with marsh shown in the sheltered water behind it. -
Identifying landforms on a stretch of UK coastline
What landforms of erosion are found at Old Harry Rocks in Dorset?
Show the answer
A chalk headland at Handfast Point with a stack called Old Harry and stumps beside it, left as caves and arches in the headland collapsed. -
Coastal management: hard and soft engineering, and a UK scheme
What is beach nourishment, and what are its benefits and costs?
Show the answer
Sand or shingle dredged from elsewhere is added to a beach to make it wider and higher, so it absorbs more wave energy and still looks like a natural beach. It is expensive, has to be repeated regularly, and dredging can damage the seabed habitat the material came from. -
Coastal management: hard and soft engineering, and a UK scheme
Which three things should you be able to explain about the coastal management scheme you studied?
Show the answer
Why that stretch of coast needed managing, which techniques were used there, and what the scheme has led to since, including the arguments it has caused.
The 5 subtopics
One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.
| Subtopic | What it covers | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Waves and coastal processes: weathering, mass movement, erosion, transport and deposition | How wind makes waves, swash and backwash, constructive and destructive waves, mechanical and chemical weathering, sliding, slumping and rock falls, hydraulic power, abrasion and attrition, longshore drift, and why sediment is deposited on the coast. | 13 |
| Coastal landforms of erosion and deposition | Concordant and discordant coasts, how rock type and lines of weakness shape cliffs, the formation of headlands and bays, wave cut platforms, caves, arches, stacks and stumps, and beaches, spits, bars and sand dunes. | 14 |
| Identifying landforms on a stretch of UK coastline | The erosional and depositional landforms of a UK coastline and how to spot them on a map, why they sit where they do, and the Dorset coast from Old Harry Rocks, Swanage and Studland to Lulworth Cove, Durdle Door and Chesil Beach. | 16 |
| Coastal management: hard and soft engineering, and a UK scheme | Hard and soft engineering compared, the benefits and costs of sea walls, rock armour, gabions, groynes, beach nourishment, reprofiling, dune regeneration and managed retreat, and the reasons, strategy, effects and conflicts of a coastal scheme. | 18 |
| Managing the Holderness coast at Mappleton | Why the boulder clay cliffs of Holderness retreat so fast, why Mappleton and its coast road were protected in 1991, the rock groynes and revetment used, and how the scheme starved Cowden and the coast further south of sediment. | 10 |
How the guide is worked
Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.
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Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
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Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
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Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.
Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.
Nearby topics
AQA GCSE Geography Active Recall Guide
Every topic, not just this one. 1,429 questions with their answers.