🏞️ UK Physical Landscapes

The UK's landscapes

The UK's landscape is tilted: uplands of old, hard, glaciated rock lie in the north and west, including the Highlands, the Lake District, the Pennines and Snowdonia. Lowlands of younger, softer rock lie in the south and east, where most farms and cities are found. Large rivers, including the Severn, the Thames and the Trent, drain the middle of the country.

Coasts (option)

Constructive waves are long and low, with a strong swash, and they build up beaches. Destructive waves are tall and storm-driven, with a strong backwash, and they wear beaches away. The sea erodes the coast through hydraulic action, in which air is forced into cracks in the rock, abrasion, in which stones grind against rock like sandpaper, attrition, in which rocks and pebbles wear each other down and become rounder, and solution, in which certain rock types dissolve.

Longshore drift happens because waves usually arrive at an angle, driven by the prevailing wind. The swash carries sand diagonally up the beach, but the backwash drags it straight back down, so sediment moves along the coast in a zigzag path. Longshore drift builds spits, which form where the coastline changes direction and the end is often curved by the wind, and bars, which form when a spit grows across a bay and seals it off to create a lagoon, as well as feeding sand onto beaches generally.

Where bands of rock of different strengths meet the sea, the softer rock is worn away first, forming headlands and bays. On a headland, waves widen a crack into a cave, which can be worn through to form an arch; the arch's roof eventually collapses to leave a stack, which is then worn down further into a stump, as at Old Harry Rocks. On coasts made of hard rock, the cliff base is undercut and collapses backwards over time, leaving behind cliffs and wave-cut platforms.

Rivers (option)

Moving downstream, the valley changes shape from V-shaped near the source to meandering, then to a flat floodplain nearer the mouth. The channel becomes wider and deeper, the load carried by the river becomes smaller and more rounded, and velocity actually increases, because a smooth, deep channel has less friction. The river transports its load through traction, saltation, suspension and solution.

Waterfalls, such as High Force on the River Tees, form where a band of hard rock lies over softer rock. The softer rock is undercut by erosion, and the overhang eventually collapses. Over time, the plunge pool deepens and the waterfall retreats upstream, leaving behind a steep-sided gorge.

Meanders become more pronounced over time: faster flow on the outside of a bend erodes a river cliff, while slower flow on the inside deposits sediment to form a slip-off slope. Eventually a flood can cut across the narrow neck of a meander, abandoning the old loop as an ox-bow lake.

Floods build floodplains by depositing sediment across the valley floor, and also build natural levées alongside the channel, where the coarsest material is dropped first as floodwater loses energy.

Flood risk increases with heavy rainfall, impermeable rock, and steep slopes, and is made worse by human activity such as urbanisation, which covers ground with tarmac and drains, deforestation, and soil compaction. A hydrograph shows this risk visually: a short lag time combined with a steep, high peak indicates a 'flashy', fast-responding and dangerous catchment.

Glacial (option)

Ice erodes the landscape through plucking, in which meltwater freezes onto rock and rips it away as the glacier moves, and abrasion, in which rocks embedded in the ice grind against the bed, as well as by bulldozing loose material. Above the ice, freeze-thaw weathering shatters exposed rock. These processes carve upland features including corries, which are armchair-shaped hollows often containing a small lake called a tarn, arêtes, pyramidal peaks, and U-shaped troughs with hanging valleys and truncated spurs.

As ice melts, it deposits the material it was carrying. This forms moraines, which are ridges of deposited material, with the terminal moraine marking the furthest point the ice reached, drumlins, which are egg-shaped hills aligned with the direction of ice flow, and erratics, which are boulders left far from where they originally formed.

Glaciated uplands such as the Lake District are used for tourism, attracting around 16 million visitors a year, as well as sheep farming, forestry, quarrying and reservoirs. These uses create conflicts, including footpath erosion, traffic congestion, second homes pricing local people out of the housing market, and quarry scars weighed against the jobs quarrying provides. These conflicts are managed through park-and-ride schemes, footpath repairs and planning rules.