Yep, it’s grass. On the beach. Again.
I’ve just been down on the beach for a stroll and as you can see from my dusky photo the grass is establishing itself again. Not in the same area mind, rather than by the pirate ship and the lifeboat station where it’s been dug-up, strimmed and sprayed at various times, this is opposite Trinity Road and past Kings Gap towards the slipway at Beach Road.
I don’t think it’ll be a surprise to anyone that it’s growing again. The debate will continue to let it grow. Or not?
By the way. The sandyachts/kite buggies have been out in force on the sandbank …great colours to watch from the promenade!
Having had a lot of people asking about the grass in the HELP Shop I enquired of our Councillors and was told the spraying is taking place this week as planned. It is on a programme each year till 2015 as I understand it.
As I have said many times, there is nothing that can be done.
Spraying and digging are a waste of tax-payers money. Digging is damaging the beach profile that will increase the risk of Winter-storm damage.
As the peninsular rises, along with Britain north of a line from Bristol to Hull (roughly), the high tide recedes to produce an ever increasing dry area allowing plant species to become established.
King Cnut’s courtiers said that a king can control the tides. He demonstrated (at Meols, some say) that not even a king may control the tides. Man cannot control isostasy. As the land rises, the plants will grow.
There is nothing to be done.
The beach, along with the Wirral Peninsula is rising by the process of isostasy following the end of the Last Great Ice Age some 20,000 years ago.
You can read about it at
http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~tony/watts/downloads/chap1_part.pdf
I’ve been telling local Councillors for the past 20 years not to waste money but they ignore me in favour of votes.
They remind me of King Cnut’s courtiers.
Only half the story there, what about Eustasy?
Eustasy is the rebound of the lithosphere (the outer part of the globe like the skin of an orange) following loss of loading, 1500m of ice on what is now the Wirral Peninsula, when the Last Great Ice Age ended and the ice cap retreated. A cubic metre of ice weighs 0.9 tonnes, a 1500m column of ice weighs 1350 tonnes,
In addition to the Oxford University paper to which I earlier referred, I recommend that you read that by British Geological Survey
http://www.nda.gov.uk/rwm/issues/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/04/Potential-natural-changes-and-implciations-for-a-UK-GDF-March-2013.pdf
wherein general rises of about 1mm pa are described.
As the land here inexorably rises (subsides in Southern England), so the high tide line will recede (increase in Mean Sea-Level is being counteracted to some extent) to allow establishment of plant species.
To add Tidal Loading and Earth Tide herein further complicates the discussion, so please may we set them aside.
Spending money on our parks is worthwhile and expedient. To spend money on making our beaches temporarily look tidy by removal of “grass” is wasteful of Tax-payers money. Our Council is already hard-pressed and should spend the few thousand pounds that it spends annually on this pointless task, is better spent elsewhere.
Do you really want money spent year after year on a useless project?
Not my understanding of eustasy.
Eustasy is the change in sea level caused typically by changes in the earth’s crust or the melt waters of glaciers. Currently eustasy is causing a general rise in sea level.
In a specific location, the net sea level change is the combined effects of isostasy, the bounce back in the level of the crust after glaciers have gone, and eustasy.
I believe the current net sea level change on the Wirral is a RISE in sea level, not a lowering in sea level, which was your first argument.
Will everybody please accept my apologies for using the wrong word.
I have been describing isostasy!
A typing error on my part compounded by my further description of isostasy as eustasy.
The Wirral Peninsula is in a state of ISOSTASY in that it is rebounding upwards from the centre of the Earth outwards because the ice load has been removed i.e. it is positive for Wirral
Eustasy is the change of Mean Sea Level, which is increasing (positive) for the whole World.
Eustasy is greater than isostasy for Wirral.
There is a net change arising from the rebound of the lithosphere (isostasy), rising sea-level (eustasy), tidal loading (negative) and the Earth Tide (positive or negative dependant upon Moon’s position as per Ocean Tide but delayed).
For Wirral, the net result is positive meaning that the beach level is increasing, the slope of the beach is increasing, the mean high tide line is falling, which taken together means that plant species will establish themselves over time regardless of the action taken by Man and / or WMBC.
I sincerely apologise for my misuse of words and hope that everybody now understands.
Thank you to Chris Hankin for re-directing me.
Everything to which I have referred may be checked with BGS, the UK universities (best sources) and NASA.
I quite like it that our parks aren’t just left to nature – it’s nice that someone trims the hedges, cuts the lawns and takes out the weeds. Why shouldn’t our beaches be looked after as well?