Eroding coastline, Barton-on-Sea

Barton on Sea (often hyphenated as Barton-on-Sea) is a coastal village situated in Hampshire, England. As a settlement, Barton has a history dating back to Anglo-Saxon times, although the modern village was largely built in the 20th century. It is effectively a suburb of New Milton. Barton is notable for the many fossils to be found in the Barton geological beds in the cliffs, as well as for the significant sea defences built to defend the cliffs against coastal erosion.

England (ⁱ/ˈɪŋɡlənd/) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west. The Irish Sea lies north west of England, whilst the Celtic Sea lies to the south west. The North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separate it from continental Europe. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight.

Hampshire (ⁱ/ˈhæmpʃɪər/, /ˈhæmpʃə/ or variants; abbreviated Hants) is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, the former capital city of England. Hampshire is the most populous ceremonial county in the United Kingdom outside the metropolitan counties such as the West Midlands. Hampshire is notable for housing the birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force. The ceremonial county is bordered by Dorset to the west, Wiltshire to the north-west, Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, and West Sussex to the east. The southern boundary is the coastline of the English Channel and the Solent, facing the Isle of Wight.

Erosion is the process by which soil and rock are removed from the Earth's surface by exogenetic processes such as wind or water flow, and then transported and deposited in other locations.

While erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10-40 times the rate at which erosion is occurring globally. Excessive erosion causes problems such as desertification, decreases in agricultural productivity due to land degradation, sedimentation of waterways, and ecological collapse due to loss of the nutrient rich upper soil layers. Water and wind erosion are now the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for 84% of degraded acreage, making excessive erosion one of the most significant global environmental problems.

Industrial agriculture, deforestation, roads, anthropogenic climate change and urban sprawl are amongst the most significant human activities in regard to their effect on stimulating erosion. However, there are many available alternative land use practices that can curtail or limit erosion, such as terrace-building, no-till agriculture, and revegetation of denuded soils.