Coastal Biodiversity and ecosystem service sustainability (CBESS)
Overview
The health of the UK’s coastlines is inextricably linked to our success as an island nation, and resonates through our economy, our recreation, and our culture. One of the most sensitive environments to the pressures of climate change are coastal habitats. Salt marshes, mudflats, beaches and rocky shores will all be affected. Of these areas, the most sensitive are mudflats and salt marshes, both common features of our coastal environment and comprise just over half of the UK’s total estuarine area.
The CBESS consortium of UK experts consisted of microbial ecologists, environmental economists, to mathematical modellers, practitioners belonging to the British Trust for Ornithologists and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and statutory agencies Natural Resources Wales, Natural England and Scottish Natural Heritage. All have an immediate and vested interest in the sustainable use of coastal wetlands.
The regional study compared two areas of great local and national importance for England: Morecambe Bay on the west coast and the Essex Marshes on the east coast. We will carried out biological and physical surveys at more than 600 stations and used these results to clarify how biodiversity provides important ecosystem functions. Although the field work has concluded there is a huge legacy of data and our work and analysis continues.
At Queen's University Belfast the project involved Dr. Lydia Bach now based at the University of Glasgow. Lydia's PhD focused on quantifying patterns in food webs in the shallow embayments that were part of the CBESS project. Her work involved sampling for mobile fish and predators using fyke nets out on the mud and sand flats. She expanded on the core CBESS study sites undertaking similar studies looking at the scaling of biodiversity and ecosystem processes across a hierarchy of spatial scales in Loughs Carlingford, Foyle and Belfast here in Northern Ireland. The project at QUB was assisted by the likes of Carl Reddin and Mark Ravinet and involved Dr. Nessa O'Connor now at TCD.
Head on over to the CBESS website at St. Andrews here...
