EurOCEAN 2000 - Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee

cliff erosion and the life span of engineering structures are closely controlled by the evolution
of the shore platforms. Coastal protection agencies and engineering contractors have
historically often assumed that the platforms are relatively stable and unchanging, but this is
frequently not the case.
The ESPED project, which started in 1998 and is due to end in 2001, brings together a
multidisciplinary team from five EU nations to further understanding of the processes and rates
of change on shore platforms around the coasts of Europe (see Foote et al., 2000). These
platforms exist in very different climate, tide and wave environments, and have a varied history
with respect to the rise and fall of land and sea levels both in the past and at the present day.
The erosion dynamics comprise three fairly distinct components broadly defined as the
physical loss of rock mass through wave action and mechanical weathering, the chemical
losses due to solution and other processes and biological losses associated with the action of
the invertebrates that live and graze on the platforms. Together they lower the platform surface
and a major objective of the ESPED project is to identify the relative importance of these
different components and how their contributions to downwearing of the platform may vary
under differing environmental conditions. The project is also concerned to measure and
compare current rates of platform downwearing in different parts of Europe.
CHOICE OF MONITORING SITES
ESPED has established a series of monitoring sites representative of the contrasting coastal
environments of Europe. These sites are located on (i) the high wave energy, meso-tidal
Channel and Atlantic coasts of southern Britain, northern and western France and Portugal with
their warm to cool seas of average salinity, (ii) the low energy, micro-tidal Baltic coast of
Sweden with its cool to cold sea of low salinity and (iii) the low energy micro-tidal
Mediterranean coast of mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands with their warm sea of above
average salinity. At all sites two representative transects have been established along which
sampling is concentrated.
In the Mediterranean, nine monitoring sites have been established on Mallorca on limestones
and dolomites in the Serra de Tramuntana, Serres de Llevant and the Marina areas. A further
site has been set up on the granite coast of Catalana. On the Portuguese coast three sites have
been located: Ribeira d'Ilhas (40km northwest of Lisboa), Praia des Avencas (20km west of
Lisboa), and Praia de Monte Clérigo (about 250km south of Lisboa). The hardest lithologies at
these field sites correspond to wackes and marly limestones, whilst softer lithologies include
soft marls, shales, and slates. Four field sites have been selected in France: Grandes Dalles and
Eletot (Pays de Caux, Normandie) on chalk platforms, Plage de Sable Menu, (Presqu'ile du
Croisic, Loire-Atlantique), and Port-Lin (Baie de la Nicouse, Presqu'ile du Croisic, Loire-
Atlantique) on leucogranite platforms. The UK has four monitoring sites: three on the Sussex
chalk coast at Peacehaven (an unprotected site and also a site protected by sea defences),
Cuckmere Haven, and Birling Gap, and a fourth at St. Donat's (Glamorgan, South Wales) on
Lias limestone (see Foote et al., 2000). In Sweden four monitoring sites have been established
at Ramsvikslandet and Hovs Hallar on the west coast, and Fårö and Höga Kusten to the east.
The Swedish field sites are comprised of a different rock types including granite, gneiss,
limestone, and dolerite. Furthermore, the different sites experience a range of rates of isostatic
uplift following the last glaciation.
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