Measure for measure 

Richard Edmonds, Earth Science Manager, Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site

We all know that the beaches around Lyme Regis and Charmouth are amongst the most famous places to find fossils in the world and every year thousands of people, young and old, local and holidaymaker together with numerous school groups visit, enjoy and learn about the amazing story locked within the rocks.

Unfortunately a very small proportion of people chip away at the cliffs despite clear warnings about the hazards. This may not be anything new, but there are increasing expressions of concern about safety and damage to the cliffs. These concerns, together with ongoing monitoring, have led to the initiation of two new projects funded by the Jurassic Coast Team and Natural England. 

A summer fossil warden

From the end of June to the end of September, a fossil warden, Stuart Godman, will be on hand to patrol the beaches and dissuade people from chipping away at the cliffs. He is working through Dorset County Council's Countryside Service and will be based at the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre. 

Stuart said:

The role is about good advice to people not to climb up or chip into the cliffs. The best, and safest place to find fossils is on the beach where the sea has done all the hard work, washing away the soft mud to leave the well preserved fossils in the sand and gravel. It will be a bit like doing mini guided walks over and over again, showing people how to collect successfully and safely.

Stuart Godman, summer fossil warden for Charmouth and Lyme Regis:

Laser scanning survey of Charmouth cliffs

Erosion is the reason why thousands of people can search for fossils and yet every year there is a fresh supply to find! Cliff falls and landslides, large and small, are washed away by the sea and uncover amazing fossils. Erosion is the reason why we have such an interesting, internationally important and beautiful coastline. The big question is; ‘do people chipping into the cliffs have a significant impact on erosion?' The answer is almost certainly ‘No' but now, with the advent of modern technology, it is possible to measure the effect of ‘people erosion' very precisely and compare it with natural erosion.

Bournemouth University has just acquired the very latest in technology to make this possible. Scientists from the university has placed laser scanning unit on the beach in front of the cliff, capable of scanning entire sections of the cliff face at incredibly fine resolution. The cliffs either side of Charmouth were scanned in June this year. The intention is to repeat the process at the end of the summer and again in the spring of next year. It will then be possible to accurately measure the erosion over the summer and winter. In the longer term, these scans will also be useful as a benchmark for measuring change over many years, as it is possible to return and repeat the laser scanning as desired.

Andy Ford, a lecturer in Geoinformatics at the School of Conservation Sciences, Bournemouth University said;

"Using our new state-of-the-art laser we're able to automatically scan the entire cliff face at a resolution of centimetres over hundreds of square metres. What is more, once we tell the scanner where it is and what we want it to do it takes over and scans a section of the cliff, robot fashion, in comfortably under an hour. Back in the office we stitch the sections together to make a very detailed virtual model of the entire cliff. It even takes its own pictures and pastes them over the model. The results are something to behold! Because the scanner knows exactly where it is we can make more models at different times of the year and measure the differences between them. Such a study would have been unthinkable only a short time ago, but this mind-boggling technology makes it all possible."

Charmouth Cliff laser scan: