Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest

Site of Special Scientific Interest

A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

 that stretches across two counties:Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

 and East Sussex

East Sussex

East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...

. It is of both geological and biological interest.

Its geological interest is the geomorphology of Dungeness and Rye Harbour

Rye Harbour

Rye Harbour is a village located on the East Sussex coast in southeast England, near the estuary of the River Rother: it is part of the civil parish of Icklesham. Rye Harbour is located some two miles downstream of the town of Rye....

. The area is a cuspate foreland

Cuspate foreland

Cuspate forelands, also known as cuspate barriers or Nesses in Britain, are geographical features found on coastlines and lakeshores that are created primarily by long shore drift. Formed by accretion and progradation of sand and shingle, they extend outwards from the shoreline in a triangular shape...

 formed of shingle

Shingle

Shingle can refer to:*A flat covering element for a roof, including**Shake , a wooden shingle that is made from split logs**Roof shingle, a roof covering consisting of individual overlapping elements...

 ridges formed by thousands of years of coastal erosion and accretion.

The biological interest is due to its habitats of salt marsh

Salt marsh

A salt marsh is an environment in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and salt water or brackish water, it is dominated by dense stands of halophytic plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs. These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the salt marsh...

, saline lagoons, vegetated shingle, sand dunes and ditch systems. These host a wide variety of fauna, some of which is nationally rare. The area also supports large numbers of breeding and non-breeding birds.