Bracklesham Bay
Bracklesham Bay is a long, barely indented bay on the English Channel, with a long, sandy shore, lying along the south-west coast of the Manhood Peninsula in the south-west of Sussex. It runs from West Wittering, at the opening of Chichester Harbour in the north-west, to Selsey Bill, Sussex's southernmost tip, in the south-east. To the west is Spithead, which lies between the mainland part of Hampshire and its great island, the Isle of Wight.
The Isle of Wight is visible from the beach, as are the Nab Tower lighthouse and the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth. The villages of Bracklesham and East Wittering stands in the centre of the bay's coastline.
In and around the bay, 496 acres have been designated a biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest.[1] This zone is also a Geological Conservation Review site.[2]
Biology and geology
This stretch of foreshore has unimproved grazing pastures, shingle, salt marsh, reed beds and ditches. The pasture is subject to seasonal flooding and it is important for its breeding and overwintering birds. The site has highly fossiliferous Eocene (56 to 34 million years ago) beds with over 160 fish species. There are also much more recent Middle Pleistocene marine deposits dating to around 500,000 years ago which provide a record of changes in sea levels.[3]
Medmerry managed realignment scheme
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The earth embankment at Medmerry holding back the sea was originally built in the 1960s; however the coastline in the area was subject to frequent flooding events which were becoming unsustainable.[4] The scheme arose out of consultations from the 2008 Pagham to East Head Coastal Defence Strategy with the managed realignment scheme being adopted.[5] In 2013 the Environment Agency completed the new four and a half mile inland floodbank and breach in the shingle wall to providing flood relief and this enabled creation of the form the Medmerry RSPB nature reserve.[6] [7]
Location
- Location map: 50°45’11"N, -0°50’49"W
- Streetmap: SZ814954
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Bracklesham Bay) |
References
- ↑ SSSI listing and designation for Bracklesham Bay
- ↑ "Bracklesham (Tertiary Palaeobotany)". Joint Nature Conservation Committee. http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=4174&gcr=1585.
- ↑ "Bracklesham Bay citation". Natural England. https://designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk/PDFsForWeb/Citation/1004079.pdf.
- ↑ "Managed retreat - Medmerry, Sussex". BBC Bitesize. 18 January 2018. https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/ztffqhv/revision/5.
- ↑ "Medmerry Managed Realignment Scheme". http://teamvanoord.com/project-list/medmerry-managed-realignment-scheme/.
- ↑ "About Medmerry". RSPB. http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/find-a-reserve/reserves-a-z/reserves-by-name/m/medmerry/about.aspx.
- ↑ "Managed realignment at Medmerry, Sussex". Institution of Civil Engineers. 28 September 2015. https://www.ice.org.uk/knowledge-and-resources/case-studies/managed-realignment-at-medmerry-sussex.