Abstract
Predicted sea-level rise and increased storminess are anticipated to lead to increases in coastal erosion. However, assessing if and how rocky coasts will respond to changes in marine conditions is difficult due to current limitations of monitoring and modelling. Here, we measured cosmogenic 10Be concentrations across a sandstone shore platform in North Yorkshire, UK, to model the changes in coastal erosion within the last 7 kyr and for the first time quantify the relative long-term erosive contribution of landward cliff retreat, and down-wearing and stripping of rock from the shore platform. The results suggest that the cliff has been retreating at a steady rate of 4.5 ± 0.63 cm yr−1, whilst maintaining a similar profile form. Our results imply a lack of a direct relationship between relative sea level over centennial to millennial timescales and the erosion response of the coast, highlighting a need to more fully characterise the spatial variability in, and controls on, rocky coast erosion under changing conditions.
Highlights
Predicted sea-level rise and increased storminess are anticipated to lead to increases in coastal erosion
The key findings of our study are: (i) over long timescales, cliff retreat rate has been relatively steady, (ii) the coastal profile has retained a stable shape while migrating landwards and (iii) steps delimiting beds at the foreshore have been back-wearing at rates less than half that of cliff retreat
Our data demonstrate that reconstructed rates of cliff retreat at our site have been steady despite ~5.8-m relative sea-level (RSL) rise over the last 7 kyr[21,22]
Summary
Predicted sea-level rise and increased storminess are anticipated to lead to increases in coastal erosion. The models that use cosmogenic isotope concentrations to derive long-term rocky coast erosion are based around fundamental assumptions of how relative sea-level (RSL) change and the shore platform interact to drive erosion of the cliff. These studies have by necessity simplified the erosion of shore platforms by assuming erosion rates to be negligible[14] or pre-defining a geometry-based long-term erosion trend, such that platform lowering is proportional to cliff retreat rate where an equilibrium coastal profile is maintained (profile-parallel coastal erosion3)[15,16]. While the potentially highly important role of some of these factors in reconstructing the rate and nature of rocky coast erosion has been conceptually demonstrated[13], this has yet to be explored with field data
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