Caves, Arches & Stacks
Geography: AQA GCSE, topic 3.2.7
Caves, Arches and Stacks
Rock with lots of cracks and joints is called soft rock. Headlands are made of resistant rocks with not many weaknesses. As headlands are eroded, these landforms can be created:
Caves
- There are cracks, joints, and weaknesses in rocks.
- When cracks get wider (because of hydraulic action, abrasion or attrition), they can become large enough to create a cave.
Arches
- Caves can be eroded from one side of the rock through the other.
- This creates an arch.
- You can see right through an arch to the other side of the rock.
- Durdle Door (Dorset), Bow Fiddle Rock (Scotland), and the Green Bridge of Wales (Pembrokeshire) are the 3 most famous arches in the UK.
Stacks
- When the top of an arch collapses because of gravity, a column called a stack is left behind.
The timeline of a stack
Test yourself on Caves, Arches & Stacks
Erosion of Headlands
Which coastal landform is not created by the erosion of headlands?
Which of these coastal landforms is created by the erosion of headlands?