GEOSC 010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 20: Circular Motion, Beach Nourishment, Longshore Drift
Document Summary
Shorelines are dynamic environments, highly influenced by several elements, such as topography, geology, and climate, and therefore, vary from place to place. With time, however, this usually changes to a straight coast, owing to geological factors. 20. 5 stabilizing the shore: the shoreline is a very fragile and unstable environment, and often, not a suitable place to live, hard stabilization involves building of structures to prevent erosion along a coast or block the. It can change rapidly in response to natural forces, and stabilizing it becomes essential. movement of sand along a beach. This includes jetties, groins, breakwaters, and seawalls: hard stabilization is not often recommended, due to the effects it has on the ecology, especially leading to a degradation of the natural beach. Therefore, certain alternatives to hard stabilization have been adopted: beach nourishment involves adding large amounts of sand to the beach, thus extending it seaward, making the shoreline less vulnerable to destruction by wave activity.
