Hornsea Cliffs (Credit: Dr Sally Brown, University of Southampton)
A new project is being launched that will help forecast what the UK's coastline will look like in up to 100 years' time. The four-year £2.9m iCoast project brings together UCL scientists with researchers from a number of other UK universities, research laboratories and leading consultants, to develop new methods that will characterise and forecast long-term changes to coastal sediment systems. UK coastal areas are at greater risk of flooding and erosion than their landward equivalents. Degradation of their geomorphic systems, due to sediment starvation and/or climate change, could greatly increase these risks. Professor Jon French, UCL Geography, said: "We are excited to be embarking on this very challenging project that aims to deliver a major advance in our ability to predict how our coasts will change during the 21st century. "UCL's role will be to lead development of a new broad-scale systems framework for understanding the complex web of interactions between coasts, estuaries and the offshore zone, and also to develop new computer-based models to predict how coastal morphology will evolve over the timescales relevant to the forecasting of climate change impacts at the coast. " - UCL's role will be to lead development of a new broad-scale systems framework for understanding the complex web of interactions between coasts, estuaries and the offshore zone - Professor Jon French Previously, the ability to analyse and forecast geomorphic changes was limited.
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