Raised beach

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Although this raised beach at Rhossili (Wales) is now used for farmland, it provides evidence of a glacioeustatic rise in the land of this area.

A raised beach is an emergent coastal landform. Raised beaches are beaches or wave cut platforms raised above the shore line by a relative fall in the sea level. This could be due to an actual fall in the water level such as may be caused by the partial draining of a lake or a river cutting its way into a deeper channel. It may also be as a result of the isostatic recovery of the land. This is where the accumulation of ice sheets have depressed the land so that when the ice sheets melts the land readjusts with time thus raising the height of the beaches. More frequently a raised beach is formed when tectonic activity, such as earthquakes which cause the level of the land to rise.

Raised beaches are found mainly on west-facing Atlantic coasts, such as Donegal Bay, County Cork and County Kerry in Ireland; Bude, Widemouth Bay, Crackington Haven,Tintagel, Perranporth and St Ives in Cornwall, the Vale of Glamorgan, Gower Peninsula, Pembrokeshire and Cardigan Bay in Wales, the Isle of Jura in Scotland, Finistère in Brittany and Galicia in Northern Spain.