As a direct result of a Crown Estate–Caird Fellowship at the National Maritime Museum, Hannah Evans of the British Geological Survey has produced this report on historic changes in the Great Yarmouth spit and the related coastal system.
Little is known of the volume of sediment held within the Great Yarmouth spit or its short-term fluctuations in sediment storage capacity. Such gaps in coastal sediment budgets mean that the effects of predicted future increases in relative sea level and storminess are difficult to forecast. The current study addressed this by examining the late-Holocene geomorphic evolution of the Great Yarmouth spit, providing a value for the volume of sediment stored within the feature and placing current morphological changes within an historical context. The specific aims of this research were to investigate: (1) spit volume, (2) spit morphological change (3) potential forcings for this change and (4) likely future morphological trends.
