Soft rock cliffs, summary of states and restoration - State 3- State 2

Potential "free-up" areas for reversing the trend towards protection and stabilisation are relatively few and restricted to cases where the value of the property (or land) does not justify repairing existing protective structures. These amount to between eight and ten sites on the south coast of England representing 5.45km and eight sites on the east coast representing some 9km of coastline (Lee et al. 2001).

Caption: The principle states for considering restoration of 'soft' rock sea cliffs for nature conservation purposes. [Blue arrows imply 'natural movement between states; red arrows the direction and type of human induced adverse change and the green arrows the route to restoration.]

The restoration process essentially involves moving from a more stable (State 3) to a less stable (State 2). It assumes that reverting to a highly mobile erosional (State 1) is not desirable.

Caveat: The process of "freeing-up" coastal cliffs in order to 'reactivate' cliff movement and create more open communities is a relatively easy one in physical terms. What is much more difficult, is to convince those affected by the policy that it is an acceptable course of action, especially where property is threatened. Although "free-up" sites for restoring instability to coastal cliffs are relatively limited, decisions not to 'protect' housing threatened by cliff erosion have been taken, as for example at Birling Gap, East Sussex.

Comment: Coastal protection structures have affected a large proportion of the 'softer' rock cliffs especially in England and Wales. Many of these protect housing and other property. The stabilisation of the cliff face can also have an adverse impact on nature conservation interests.

References

Lee, E.M., Brunsden, D., Roberts, H., Jewell, S. & McInnes, R. 2001. Restoring biodiversity to soft cliffs. English Nature Research Report, 398 English Nature.