Advanced geography: coasts, hazards and global themes

Two fictional coasts have the same offshore wave height. Coast A faces a long fetch and frequent onshore winds; coast B lies behind an offshore barrier. At A, permeable sandstone overlies clay and the cliff becomes saturated after prolonged rain. (a) Explain how wind duration, speed, fetch, bathymetry, refraction and shelter can produce different nearshore waves despite the equal offshore height. (b) Distinguish weathering from marine erosion and explain how water may trigger a rotational failure on this cliff. (c) Evaluate how stronger waves and rainfall could interact through toe removal and reduced strength, stating why the descriptions do not permit a numerical retreat forecast. Show your reasoning on a labelled cliff cross-section.

A fictional coastline alternates resistant rock with weaker jointed rock. A headland contains a sea cave, and a bay lies beside an estuary mouth. Oblique breaking waves drive net sediment transport toward the mouth. A stated annual sediment budget has 18,000 m3 input, 14,000 m3 alongshore export and 7,000 m3 removed offshore; assume no other terms. (a) Explain how lithology, structure, refraction and sea-level history can affect landforms. (b) Draw and explain cave-arch-stack development and a wave-cut platform, giving reasons the sequence may stop. (c) Explain beach and spit formation near the estuary, calculate the net sediment budget, and evaluate why a negative whole-cell budget does not prove every beach segment erodes or that a spit must close the estuary.

Separate fictional coastal settings contain a dry sandy upper beach with onshore winds, a sheltered temperate tidal creek with mud, and a tropical intertidal shore with salt-tolerant trees. (a) Explain formation and stabilisation of dunes, saltmarsh and mangrove environments, including different sediment, climate and inundation controls. (b) A hypothetical initially stable marsh receives 8 mm/year of sediment accretion while sea-surface elevation rises 6 mm/year relative to a fixed reference, not a land-following reference. Calculate the simplified elevation balance, then add land subsidence of 3 mm/year. (c) Evaluate why planting trees everywhere or equating a positive sediment balance with guaranteed ecosystem survival is unsound. Distinguish these separate settings from a single real transect.

Real case brief for the Puget Sound region of Washington: USGS records the Mw 6.8 Nisqually earthquake on 28 February 2001, with liquefaction and damage in parts of Olympia, Seattle and Tacoma. USGS also identifies Mount Rainier lahars as a major downstream threat, including events initiated by landslides without an eruption. (a) Explain distinct earthquake and volcanic/lahar hazard chains in this shared region; do not count a lahar and volcanic ash as two of the syllabus's separate hazard categories. (b) Explain how shaking, liquefaction, ash, pyroclastic flows, lava and lahars differ in impacts and spatial reach. (c) Compare building/ground-risk reduction with lahar detection, route planning and drills. Evaluate what monitoring can and cannot establish, and identify evidence still needed to judge management success at named communities.

Use physical reasoning consistent with IPCC AR6, not an invented forecast: compare warming in Arctic/Antarctic and high-altitude cold environments with impacts on marine environments. (a) Explain snow/ice loss, the distinction between sea ice and land ice, and permafrost thaw with possible greenhouse-gas release. (b) Explain ocean warming, thermal expansion, land-ice contributions to sea level and possible circulation changes, retaining uncertainty about a specific local outcome. (c) In a separate fictional sensitivity exercise, a land-ice contribution is 0.12 m and thermal expansion 0.18 m over the same period. Sum the two and explain why it is neither a complete global projection nor a local flood-height prediction. Evaluate a linked impact on an ecosystem or coastal community.

Real source context: Bangladesh's 2023-2050 adaptation-plan publication on UNDP identifies low-lying terrain, dense settlement and reliance on climate-sensitive water/food sectors as vulnerability factors, alongside flooding, cyclones and salinity pressures. Separate fictional households A and B each lose 1,000 currency units in an equal-depth flood. A's annual income is 5,000, B's 25,000; A farms a saline-prone plot and B has insurance and savings. (a) Calculate losses as income shares and explain why equal physical exposure need not mean equal vulnerability. (b) Trace impacts through food production, housing, health and livelihoods using Bangladesh as a real context without assigning the invented households to actual villages. (c) Evaluate historical/political exclusion, service access, gender, ecosystem dependence and community adaptation; state what further data are required before ranking countries or people.

Real policy brief: the UK government's NAP3 was published on 17 July 2023 for 2023-2028; devolved governments have their own adaptation plans. Bangladesh's NAP covers 2023-2050 and sets out 113 proposed interventions with a stated estimated investment requirement of US$230 billion, not already delivered funding. (a) Compare time horizons, institutional settings and plausible priorities using infrastructure/heat resilience and Bangladesh's water, agriculture and coastal exposure context. (b) Explain the difference between adaptation, emissions mitigation, a proposed intervention and an achieved result. (c) Evaluate finance, local implementation, responsibility and climate-justice challenges in the two countries; propose comparable outcome indicators and state why 113 interventions or a published plan cannot establish superior adaptation success.

Real case brief: USGS's Zambia 2024 report says copper accounted for about 66% of goods export value in 2024. The World Bank's April 2025 Viet Nam monitor reports computers/electronics and phones jointly represented about one third of exports in 2024. (a) Contrast Zambia's primary-commodity dependence with Viet Nam's manufacturing/global-production-network role, noting that these percentages cover different product groups and are not full diversification indices. (b) In a separate fictional Zambia-like basket valued at 100 units with copper at 66, model a 20% copper-price fall with all volumes and other prices fixed; calculate the new export value and percentage change. (c) Evaluate foreign-exchange/job benefits against price volatility, import dependence, environmental costs and value capture. State what real evidence is needed to judge whether either country benefits more.

A fictional low-income exporter faces a partner's contested tariff, expensive port delays, limited trade-data capacity and a dispute over intellectual-property rules. (a) Explain the different potential roles of the WTO and UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD): negotiation/rules, monitoring/disputes, research/consensus and technical assistance. Do not present UNCTAD as the WTO's court or the WTO as a bank. (b) Assess how Aid for Trade might address transport/customs/skills constraints rather than merely abolishing a tariff. (c) A fictional customs project reduces median clearance from five to three days while exports rise 12%; calculate the time reduction and evaluate why concurrent export growth does not prove the project caused it. Propose evidence of distributional benefits and limitations for small firms.

Fictional offers to a drought-affected country are A: emergency food grants from one government; B: a development-bank concessional loan for water networks; C: an NGO-funded climate-resilient farming programme; D: a government grant requiring equipment purchase from its firms. D's budget is 12 million currency units, with 3 million administration and equipment priced at 0.3 million per unit; an untied alternative has the same budget/administration but 0.225 million per unit. (a) Classify humanitarian/development/climate, bilateral/multilateral, grant/loan and tied/untied where known. (b) Calculate units affordable under D and the alternative. (c) Evaluate donor and recipient benefits/risks, ownership, debt, procurement quality and maintenance; explain why more equipment or NGO delivery alone does not demonstrate better development outcomes.

Real source brief: Spain's tourism ministry release of 2 February 2024 reports 85,056,528 international arrivals in 2023 and spending of about EUR 108.662 billion. These are historical national release figures, not Venice/Galapagos visitor totals or a latest-series claim. UNESCO describes tourism pressure on Venice's cultural city/lagoon and visitor-management, permits/quotas and invasive-species issues in the Galapagos Islands. (a) Calculate Spain's approximate spending per arrival; distinguish arrivals, unique visitors, receipts and retained local income. (b) Compare Venice and Galapagos as real contrasting tourist areas in attraction, access, environmental/social pressures and management needs. (c) Assess seasonality, transport/ICT and affordability as controls on tourism patterns, then design an evaluation of management success at BOTH areas. State which development histories, actual visitor data and outcome evidence are still missing; do not treat UNESCO listing or a quota as proof of sustainability.