EU funds research to help coastal cities understand and arm themselves against the climate threat
He climate change It affects the Earth in many ways. The extreme weather events and the Rising sea levels are among the most serious consequences. The coastal dunes of the European Atlantic have become the natural first line of protection against flooding and coastal erosion.. Understanding and predicting the behavior of dunes in relation to these phenomena is essential to develop tools for effective coastal management. The scientists are on it.
The ERoDES project, coordinated by the University of Bordeaux (France) and financed with European funds, will allow field observations to anticipate the behavior of coastal dunes in the extreme weather conditions and extreme sea level rise expected in the coming decades due to climate change.
The results, which will be obtained through various methods, including the use of satellite data and laser light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology, will provide information and useful tools for short, medium and long term coastal management strategies along the Atlantic coast of Europe.
The researchers have demonstrated in recent years a solid knowledge and understanding of geomorphological and hydrodynamic processes along various coastal environments, and now intend to develop their numerical modeling skills through this project.
ERoDES will include the organization of communication activities with the general public, such as a scientific excursion, a scientific festival and the presentation of new technologies used in coastal sciencesuch as drones, to illustrate how EU-funded research aims to help reduce the risk of coastal flooding and erosion.
flood protection
Determining the effects that the effects of climate change will have on the coast is vital for the future of the 200 million Europeans who live in coastal areasand who are already feeling the impact of global warming through extreme variations in sea level and flooding.
In view of the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, the European Environment Agency estimates that many parts of Europe may experience ten times more coastal flooding by 2100 than today.
The problem will be especially severe for coastal cities. Scientists are convinced that sand dunes can play an important role in protecting coastal areas. It happens that the dunes do not currently provide as much protection as a few years ago, mainly due to the effects of human action.
Understanding how dunes respond to and recover from extreme weather events along the Atlantic coast of Europe is vital to the future of the coastline. And it will provide data that can be used to design strategies to protect dunes, restore coastlines, and protect against future storms and flooding.
Another EU-funded project, DUNES, appears to be complementary to ERoDES, as it is compiling the complete history of the human-environment interactions in coastal areas around the world, which will help try to avoid further impacts in the future.
The DUNES project, which started in November 2018 and will run until April next year, covers France, Portugal, the UK, Brazil, Mozambique, North America and New Zealand.
The beaches in danger
“The dunes are guardians of the sand, they are reservoirs“, says Joana Freitas, an environmental historian at the University of Lisbon in Portugal and principal investigator of DUNES. “When there are bigger and stronger waves during storms, the sand is taken from the beach, which creates an underwater barrier, therefore that the next waves will be blocked,” he explains.
Typically, over weeks or months, gentler waves gradually wash eroded shoreline sand back onto the beach. This fluctuation of the coast going back and forth in time is a normal coastal process that is barely noticeable most of the time, but can be dramatic during storms.
The concern of scientists is that the natural balance will end up being broken, which would cause the destruction of the beaches and the loss of coastal protection provided by the dunes..
After studying the evolution, response and recovery of eight coastal dune areas from North West England to South West France between 2011 and 2020, ERoDES scientists have concluded that all have been exposed to and eroded by massive storms, particularly by the extreme weather experienced in the winter of 2013-2014.
But, Although all eight have been exposed to the same storms, to the surprise of scientists, the dunes have responded differently and have recovered at different rates.. While some areas have returned to the same state they were in before the storms, others are still recovering or have lost even more sand.
Researchers are now looking for explanations for this puzzling fact, which could be related to the different environmental characteristics of each dune area, including tides, climate, dune size, shoreline shape, and vegetation density.
Nature-Based Solutions
One of the main findings of the projects is that the dunes with the steepest slopes lost the most sand.
Another is that the recovery rate depends mainly on the amount of sediment available along the coast. Being able to accurately assess these sediment balances is key to anticipating the evolution of coastal dunes, the researchers point out.
Both ERoDES and DUNES respond to an initiative of the European Union (EU) to help cities and local authorities to better understand the climate threat they are facing and how to react in time.
Both projects seek new approachesaway from the “traditional arrangements” made by humans, such as boardwalks, dams or dikes.
Faced with these methods, scientists argue that future dune restoration and protection will depend on “the planting of native vegetation and the reintroduction of native plant speciesactions that are kinder to the environment and relatively cheap”.
They are, ultimately, “nature-based solutions” (SBN), identical to those that have been carried out for centuries by some European coastal populations.
NBS use nature’s own resources (clean air, water and soil) wisely to meet environmental challenges while supporting biodiversity and delivering environmental, social and economic benefits.
In addition to ERoDES and DUNES, other projects implementing SBN against coastal erosion, including dune restoration, such as REST-COAST (large-scale restoration of coastal ecosystems) and Interreg MANABAS (focused on the North Sea region) are underway. ).
DUNES project website: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/802918/en
ERoDES project website: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/891807/es
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Contact of the Environment section: [email protected]