Y12 Geography students visited Gloucester Docks in February and in March went to Swanage for the weekend to undertake vital research and field work for their Geographical Investigations Unit. This covered Urban and Rural Rebranding and Crowded Coasts, bringing the theory they had learnt in the classroom to life. The weather was stunning and showed this amazing coastline in all its glory.
Please read report from Y12 Geography student, Chloe Randall:
On the first day in Dorset, we did fieldwork techniques at Studland Bay, measuring the size of sand dune blow outs and looking at Studland Bay’s coastal management scheme. We used GIS to analyse images of Studland Bay in 1972 and 2014 and were shocked to see how much of the beach had been eroded.
For day two, we visited Boscombe and undertook a bipolar analysis, interviewing people to find out their opinions on the seafront regeneration scheme. We also assessed the levels of deprivation in the area, and used Spearman’s Rank to analyse the correlations of our data. We ended the day’s research with a visit to see Old Harry Rocks.
On the last day, we visited Swanage Bay to see the coastal management strategies. Before we left we carried out research on the geology of the area, learning about the discordant coastline, eroding at different rates. When we were on the beach, we measured the sand height up against the groynes to see if they were preventing longshore drift – protecting the coast from erosion. We found that along the seafront, the coastal management scheme was to ‘hold the line’ meaning that part of the coast was highly protected against erosion.
After all our hard work and to finish off the trip, we enjoyed fish and chips along the seafront before our journey home.
In our first lesson after the trip we went over some exam questions and found that the field trip had really helped us answer them, giving us a lot more confidence for when we do our exam in the summer.
Thank you to Mr Hamilton and Mr Williams for making the geography trip extra fun, we all had an amazing time.
Chloe Randall – Y12
