The concept of coastal cells: balancing sediment budgets

Research investigating the shortcomings of the concept of coastal cells, and the long-term gains and losses of beach sediments around English and Welsh coastlines.

From:
Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research and Development Programme and Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
Published
11 February 2021
Category:
Understanding risks from all sources of flooding
Topics:
Coast, Coastal erosion, Flood risk assessment, Sea level rise, Understanding physical processes
Project status:
Completed
Project code:
FD1305
Date of completion:
31 March 2000

Documents

Beach material super-budgets - final report (39 KB) WORD

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Details

This research project investigated the concept of coastal cells and the long-term gains and losses of beach sediments around the coastline of England and Wales. This will help manage beaches effectively as part of coastal defence against erosion and flooding by the sea.

Managing beaches is at the heart of the ‘soft’ engineering approach, which is often the preferred choice for protecting coasts from erosion and flood in the UK. The concept of coastal ‘cells’ (areas where the beach sediment is self-contained) has been applied to coastlines in England and Wales, improving sand and gravel beach management. These coastal cells provide a framework for the calculations of sediment ‘budgets’ for the UK coastline. In a perfect cell there should be no losses or gains of beach sediment and the sediment budget will remain in balance.

However, it’s often that sediment budgets do not match the volumes of beach material lost or gained. In many areas, sediment losses in coastal cells are higher than the gains and these shortfalls are often replaced artificially.

This project examined three sections of the English coastline to demonstrate the difficulties of trying to balance a sediment budget.

The final report from this project provided:

  • a critical review of the coastal cell concept and the issues with it
  • a description of the processes involved in the supply and loss of beach sediments - an example of these processes around the coast of the UK
  • recommendations for improving understanding of sediment supply and loss

This project ran from 1999 to 2000 at a cost of £43,150.

Published 11 February 2021