How do coastal processes create distinctive landforms, and how do these change over time?
Erosional and depositional coastal landforms; the influence of geology and sea-level change; and how landscapes evolve over different timescales.
An Eduqas A-Level Geography answer to coastal landforms and landscape change in Component 1, covering erosional landforms (headlands, caves, arches, stacks, wave-cut platforms), depositional landforms (beaches, spits, bars, tombolos), the role of geology, emergent and submergent landforms of sea-level change, and short to long-term change, with UK examples.
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What this dot point is asking
Eduqas wants you to explain how coastal processes create distinctive erosional and depositional landforms, how geology and sea-level change influence them, and how coastal landscapes evolve over short, medium and long timescales.
The answer
Erosional landforms
On a discordant coast, where rock bands meet the sea at right angles, differential erosion carves resistant rock into headlands and weak rock into bays. On a headland, wave attack exploits a line of weakness: a crack is widened to a cave, caves erode through a headland to form an arch, the arch roof collapses to leave a stack, and the stack is reduced to a stump. The chalk of The Foreland in Dorset shows this sequence at Old Harry Rocks. On a concordant coast, where a resistant band fronts the sea, the waves may breach it and erode softer rock behind to form a cove, as at Lulworth Cove.
Depositional landforms
A beach is the simplest store, swash-aligned where waves arrive head-on or drift-aligned where they arrive obliquely. A spit grows where drift carries sediment past a change in coastline direction and deposits it in sheltered water, often recurving at its distal end (Spurn Head at the Humber mouth). A bar forms where a spit grows right across a bay, trapping a lagoon behind it, and a tombolo joins an island to the coast, as at Chesil Beach, an 18 mile shingle ridge linking the Isle of Portland to the mainland and sheltering the Fleet lagoon.
Geology and sea-level change
Geology controls landforms through lithology (rock resistance) and structure (the arrangement of beds, joints and dip). Resistant rock forms cliffs, headlands and stacks; weak rock forms bays and slumped, low-angle cliffs. Sea-level change then sets the boundary conditions. It changes eustatically (a global change in ocean-water volume, for example as ice sheets melt) and isostatically (local vertical land movement, for example rebound after ice unloading). Falling relative sea level produces emergent landforms such as raised beaches and abandoned cliffs; rising relative sea level drowns the coast to produce submergent landforms, rias (drowned V-shaped river valleys) and fjords (drowned U-shaped glacial troughs).
Examples in context
Example 1. The Dorset coast (UNESCO Jurassic Coast). Dorset shows the whole landform suite in one place. The discordant section around Swanage forms headlands of resistant chalk and limestone with bays in weaker clays, and the chalk headland of The Foreland carries the Old Harry Rocks arch-and-stack sequence. Just west, Lulworth Cove is a classic concordant feature where the sea has breached a resistant Portland limestone band and eroded the softer clays behind. Chesil Beach, a graded shingle tombolo, completes the depositional half. These located figures turn a generic process answer into a high-band response.
Example 2. Submergent landforms of south-west England. Rising relative sea level since the last glacial maximum has drowned the river valleys of Devon and Cornwall to form rias such as the Fal and Dart estuaries, deep, winding inlets with the branching, dendritic plan of the former river systems. Further north in Scotland and Norway, drowned glacial troughs form fjords, far deeper, with a U-shaped cross-section and a shallow rock threshold at the mouth where the glacier thinned. The contrast between the two is a favourite Eduqas discriminator because it tests both the process of submergence and the prior shape of the valley.
Try this
Q1. Describe how a wave-cut platform forms. [4 marks]
- Cue. Waves erode a notch at the cliff base; the cliff above is undercut, collapses and retreats, leaving a gently sloping platform exposed at low tide.
Q2. Distinguish between a ria and a fjord. [3 marks]
- Cue. Both are submergent valleys drowned by rising sea level; a ria is a drowned river valley with a V-shaped cross-section, a fjord is a drowned glacial trough with a U-shaped cross-section and a shallow entrance threshold.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of WJEC Eduqas exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
Eduqas 2018 (style)6 marksExplain the formation of a spit.Show worked answer →
Sequence the process from drift to landform, naming the controls.
Longshore drift transports sediment along the coast in the direction of the dominant wave approach. Where the coastline changes direction (at a river mouth or bay), drift continues across the gap and sediment is deposited in deeper, sheltered water, building a ridge out from the land.
Wave refraction and a change in the prevailing wind curve the distal end landward, forming a recurved hook, and salt marsh develops in the sheltered water behind.
A located example such as Spurn Head at the Humber mouth secures the marks.
Markers reward a sequenced, process-led explanation, not a labelled sketch alone.
Eduqas 2022 (style)12 marksAssess the relative importance of geology in explaining the development of coastal landforms.Show worked answer →
A 12-mark extended response (AO1 and AO2) needing a judgement, not a list.
Geology matters greatly: lithology controls resistance (resistant chalk and limestone form headlands and cliffs; weak clays form bays), and structure (concordant versus discordant coasts, jointing, dip) controls landform type, as at Lulworth Cove and Old Harry Rocks.
But geology is not the only control: wave energy and the marine and sub-aerial process balance, sediment supply, and sea-level change all shape landforms, so a resistant rock in a high-energy setting still erodes.
Strong answers argue that geology sets the template on which process operates, and reach a supported conclusion that its importance is greatest in explaining erosional landform type and least in explaining depositional landforms, which depend more on sediment supply.
Markers reward a balanced, exemplified judgement.
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Sources & how we know this
- Eduqas A-level Geography specification (from 2016) — Eduqas (2016)