Human Activity on Coasts
Geography: Edexcel IGCSE, topic 1.2.14
What Effects Does Human Activity Have on Coasts?
Human activities affect coasts both directly and indirectly. Direct effects are immediate consequences of human's behaviour. Indirect effects happen as a knock-on effect of the primary effects.
Development
- If lots of people live in coastal towns, they will have lots of houses, businesses and railway lines that will need protecting from floods, erosion, and weathering.
- Indirectly, areas away from towns are more likely to be harmed. Towns can be protected by sea walls, groynes or other defences. However, as with the Holderness Coast, sometimes this can just shift the impact of erosion further down the coast.
Agriculture
- Agricultural land is less valuable than land that has housing, businesses or infrastructure on it.
- Farmland could be lost as coastal erosion destroys land.
Industry
- Most industries do not locate right next to the coast.
- The Fukushima disaster in Japan happened when a coastal nuclear power station was damaged in a tsunami.
Coastal management
- Coastal defences aim to reduce erosion and weathering.
- Hard engineering strategies to protect coastlines use man-made constructions to protect the coastline from the sea's erosion and destructive waves. Hard engineering can also be used to stop the sea or rivers from flooding areas.
- Sea walls, rock armour, gabions, and groynes are examples of coastal defences.
Test yourself on Human Activity on Coasts
What type of effect are coastal defences an example of?
Which 4 types of effects do human activities have on coastlines?