Headland Erosion PowerPoint Diagram

Understand the erosion on any specific site or teach your contractors about headland erosion as a whole with the Headland Erosion PowerPoint Diagram. The Headland Erosion PowerPoint Diagram is a fully editable PowerPoint slide that details the headland erosion in any given spot. It displays the following information: the original shape of the headland, the stump, the stack, undercutting, sea caves, lines of weakness, blowholes, arcs and the headlands as a whole. Perfect for science classes and geologists, this slide can be edited in color and text in any way that you or your company sees fit.

Some of the most spectacular natural locations that you see along the coast are made from headland erosion. From the Twelve Apostles in Australia to the numerous arches in massive rock formations found around the world, these coastal landforms are created by a process known as headland erosion.

How Coastal Features are Formed Through Erosion

The sea is one of the most erosive elements on earth, attacking the shoreline with every wave and pounding down the rocks until they break off and fall into the water. However, the progress that the water makes in eroding the shoreline depends on the hardness of the material they are up against. This means that the shore is made from alternating bands of soft rock, such as clay or sand which erodes quicker compared to chalk or harder rocks.

The places where the soft rock has eroded away faster usually forms bays or inlets while the harder rock remains further out to form headlands. Bays and headland formations are typical along coastlines that have alternating bands of soft and hard rock. Coastlines that have either all soft or all hard rock tend to have far fewer bays and formations.

For example, the famous white cliffs of Dover in England are made from chalk which is a hard material and more resistant to the erosive process compared sand or clay. You’ll notice that there are no significant bays or inlets along the cliffs of Dover as the chalk has worn away relatively evenly over millions of years. Even the harbor at Dover is relatively shallow in terms of how it sinks back into the shoreline.

How to Visualize Headland Erosion

Thanks to PowerPoint, there are visual diagrams that show the erosion process in action. When the water pounds against the coastline, it not only takes away the rock on the surface, but also damages the rocks internally. This means that arches or caves may form deep into the rock which creates some of the more spectacular coastal formations.

In some cases, a blowhole may form which happens when the rock is weakened vertically by the pounding of the surf. At some point, the arch will collapse and that will leave a column or stack which sits apart from the shoreline. The Twelve Apostles in Australia is a good example of stacks that have separated from the mainland.

However, even the harder stacks will soon collapse into stumps or fall apart totally due to the erosive nature of the water. Being unsupported by the rest of the rocks along the mainland speeds up the erosion process. That’s why the stacks do not last very long once they have been formed.

The many coastal landforms that have become natural landmarks, often visited by millions of people every year are formed through headland erosion. By using the appropriate PowerPoint diagram, you can show just how the process works quickly and easily. This is because visualization help immensely in understanding concepts such as headland erosion that create the remarkable coastal features found around the world.