Monitoring Coastal Change

Fig Animation of a changing coastline

East Head has undergone major changes over the last 150 years

The animation shows how the coastline, digitized from a variety of sources, has moved from an almost east-west spit to its present form as three sets of dunes - the active north-south foredunes, the relatively stable southwest-northeastern back dunes, and a line of dunes at the most distal end of the system, running eat-west.

As the system has moved backwards and forwards, low lying areas have been filled in and have dried out, leaving a suite of conditions under the surface that are different enough to encourage a specific range of plants that do not occur elsewhere on the Head

Data from Ordnance Survey via Edina Digimap, Channel Coastal Observatory, OpenStreetMap, and Alauda