Building with Nature: Creation, maintenance and management of beaches and dunes for multiple benefits – taking a long-term perspective Seminar

Event details

Recent years have seen increasing emphasis given to “Building with Nature”, rather than “Building in Nature”, with the objective of achieving multiple benefits related to coastal erosion and flood risk management, nature conservation, port development, tourism and recreation. Widely known examples include the Delfland Sandmotor and other projects sponsored by the Ecoshape consortium in The Netherlands. In the UK, the ‘sandmotor’ concept, marketed as ‘sandscaping’, has also been promoted over the past 5 years by the Crown Estate and their consultants, and proposals for a mega-nourishment project on the coast on northeast Norfolk are currently under discussion. Such large-scale schemes can have a significant and immediate impact on their immediate areas, but they are invariably expensive and the long-term success / sustainability is unproven, particularly if the mega-nourishment operations are undertaken as a ‘one-off’ exercise. Beach and dune nourishment projects ranging in scale from small to large have in fact been undertaken in many parts of the world for more than 50 years, and there is also a long history of creating, maintaining and managing beaches and coastal dunes extending back centuries. This presentation will examine the lessons which can be learned from these earlier interventions, and also from natural geomorphological analogues, with a view to assessing the likely long-term success and value for money of mega-nourishment schemes compared with the wider employment of smaller-scale beach and dune management measures. The performance of the Delfland sandmotor will be reviewed, and suggestions presented for an alternative, longer term and sustainable approach to coastal sand budget management, with examples drawn from Liverpool Bay , the East Riding of Yorkshire, and the Lincolnshire Coast. No registration required