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Human Impact On The Coastal Landscape

Perry Newton
Student # 000-00 1818
Geog 222 Section (1)
Mrs Sandra Burrows
Date: November 4, 2008
The Human Impact on Coastal Landscape

The relationship between humans and their environment is a topic that engenders much debate. Humans are intellectual. They can think, reason, feel and make deductions or hypothesis and seek to solve or prove their deductions or theories. The environment on the other hand is inanimate and exists by means of natural laws and principles that govern the universe. It cannot prevent man’s exploitations; it cannot take up arms and fight. However, in its own way, by natural laws, it makes efforts to purge and renew itself from the effects of man’s endeavors. Mangor (2002) argues that like the ocean that shapes coastal landforms, the coasts are dynamic aspects of the environment that are in constant change. Thus, by means of its natural processes such as sea level rise, waves and various phenomenon, erosion, accretion and reshaping of coasts, flooding and the creation of continental shelves it defends itself against man. A specific aspect of the environment that engenders conversation is the coastal landscape: its beauty, its purpose, its abuse, and its future.
Other aspects of the coastal landscape that engender discussion are those animate expressions of nature such as fossils and vegetations, birds and crustaceans, fishes and other wild life that depend on it for survival. Humans are the guardians of coastal landscapes, and they have affected them both positively and negatively. Some of the ways that they have impacted the landscape is by dredging, pollution, constructing buildings, land reclamation, creating beaches, planting exotic vegetations and trees, erecting sea walls, and by destroying natural habitats of wild life. Therefore, understanding what a coastal landscape is and how humans have influenced it is the subject of this paper.
Coastal landscape is that part of a continent, island or cay, where...