When much of the British coastline was battered by storms in January 2014, the sand dunes of Abererch near Pwllheli on the Llyn Peninsula suffered severe damage. Large sections were washed away, leaving businesses, homeowners, and the railway behind the dunes at severe risk of coastal flooding. In the months after the storms, measures were taken to stabilise the dunes and encourage regeneration. This photograph is from October 2014.
In GEOGRAPHY REVIEW Vol. 28, No. 1, the effectiveness of the coastal defences at Chesil Beach in Dorset was examined. Here the shingle beach and sea wall were severely damaged in the 2013/14 storms. Coastal dunes provide a rather different set of challenges. As the image shows, Environment Agency Wales and local landowners have implemented both hard and soft engineering approaches to trap blown sand from the near shore and re-establish the Abererch dune barrier. It will be interesting to monitor the success of these strategies over the next few years.
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