Case Study of Hastings Coastal Management

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Case Study of Hastings Coastal Management

Hastings is a town on the south coast of England approximately 60

miles south of London (see map below). In recent years, the coastline

at Hastings has had to face many large scale problems, including the

10 km stretch from Hastings eastwards to the small town of Fairlight.

With the coastline at constant exposure to the English Channel, there

are many coastal processes which take place along the stretch of beach

and cliff.

[IMAGE][IMAGE]

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Longshore Drift

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Fetch

[IMAGE]The map on the left illustrates the location of Hastings and

also the area of the coastline which is being discussed in this case

study. As can be seen, there is a large fetch distance between

Hastings and the French coastline much further south of this map.

For over a hundred years, there have been rapid coastal problems at

Hastings. However within the last 30 years, there have been drastic

measures taken at Hastings to improve the coast and protect the town

by implementing strategic coastal management plans where some have

been successful and others not so successful.

The main idea behind the coastal engineering was to protect the cliff

face at certain areas along the coast, and the beach and pier at

Hastings. To do so, various stages of protection work were carried

out. The first of these was the main protection of the cliff face; the

aim was to prevent any falling rock and also cliff retreat with the

hope that this would affect the input sediment rate, slowing it down.

An extremely important coastal work implemented at the cliff sites

from Hastings eastwards towards Fairlight. It was important however,

to implement such works on the cliffs, because of their composition or

geology that being soft sandstone with a shingle base all along the

coastline. This rock type could prove dangerous, being soft and with

little solidness in its structure. Therefore placing the protection

over the rock cliffs was a very well thought and planned engineering

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