Sub-aerial cliff failure, delivery of talus material and the temporary
protection it affords to the cliff toe from marine processes is described
by a basic module. Considering the mesoscale model assumptions, the
upper cliff is treated as a vertical block of material that shears to maintain
a vertical face when undermined; this sheared material forms a
talus wedge at the cliff toe. The parameter M has no effect on this process
beyond the erosive potential of the material (e.g. structural controls
and more complexmass movement processes such as rotational slumps
and slab failure are not included). Cliff collapse occurs when the cliff is
undercut (evaluated every 10 erosion events to save processor time).
Therefore the model is more suitable for consideration of simple cliff
systems (as described by Emery and Kuhn, 1982 and Lee and Clark,
Fig. 1. Conceptual description of the processes represented in 2D SCAPE (Walkden and Dickson, 2008).
Fig. 2.