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Coastal Landscapes and Processes

Coastal landforms of erosion and deposition

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 1 section A

Overview

How headlands and bays, caves, arches, stacks and stumps form, why cliffs steepen as they retreat, wave-cut platforms, steep shingle beaches, spits and their recurved ends, bars and lagoons, and how headlands, bays, spits, stacks and wave-cut platforms are recognised on OS maps.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

Explain how a spit is built out from the coast.

Key term

Explain how a stack forms, and what it becomes in time.

Key term

Why does a cliff become steeper as it retreats?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Explain how a headland and its neighbouring bays are formed.

    Model answer

    Waves attack alternating bands of rock, cutting quickly into the weaker bands to open sheltered bays and leaving the more resistant band projecting into the sea.

  2. 2

    How does a sea cave form in the side of a headland?

    Model answer

    Hydraulic action and abrasion widen a joint or fault at the wave-cut notch until the opening is enlarged into a hollow running back into the rock.

  3. 3

    How does a cave become an arch?

    Model answer

    Erosion continues at the back and sides of the cave until it is cut right through the narrow headland, leaving a bridge of rock above the opening.

  4. 4

    Explain how a stack forms, and what it becomes in time.

    Model answer

    The roof of an arch is weathered and undercut until it collapses, leaving an isolated pillar of rock, and further erosion reduces that pillar to a low stump.

  5. 5

    Why does a cliff become steeper as it retreats?

    Model answer

    Waves cut a notch at the high tide line and undercut the base, so the overhanging rock above eventually collapses and leaves a steep new face further inland.

  6. 6

    What is a wave cut platform, and where is it seen?

    Model answer

    It is the gently sloping rocky ledge left behind as a cliff retreats, exposed at the foot of the cliff when the tide is low.

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