The temporal and spatial scales of rocky coast geomorphology: a commentary

Abstract

Rocky shores are complex landforms that result from marine erosion and subaerial weathering. They are time-integrated features where their present day form is the result of instantaneous erosion, often on the millimetre to sub-metre scale, occurring for centuries to millennia. As a result, research on rocky coasts focuses on a range of temporal and spatial scales from granular-scale swelling of a rock surface and instantaneous wave impact to modelling millennial-scale sea level drivers. The challenge for rocky coast researchers is either to upscale or to downscale their results to the human-timescales of greatest interest to managers. The research presented in Earth Surface Processes and Lan..