NatureCoast: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding sandy coasts

Abstract

Sandy coasts are highly dynamic environments, governed by interactions of various physical, biological and societal processes. Waves, currents and wind, for example, are important environmental drivers for coastal morphodynamics. At the same time, these drivers affect ecological processes, with possible feedbacks to groundwater levels, nutrient dynamics and dune morphology. Besides these natural dynamics that constitute the coastal ecosystem, humans may influence this system, driven by the benefits they wish to obtain from the system and the societal dynamics involved. A common intervention in coastal systems is the nourishment of sand, of which the Sand Motor on the Delfland coast, The Netherlands, is an example with an unprecedented volume of 21.5 Mm3. Our aim is to improve our predictive understanding of this type of sandy nourishment as an ecosystem, in order to apply it elsewhere. With our research programme NatureCoast we have seized the opportunity to gather strategically important interdisciplinary knowledge from the Sand Motor, which forms a unique full-scale experiment. The programme includes 12 PhD projects, in which the key morphological, hydrological, geochemical, ecological and societal processes that govern the evolution and acceptability of this type of nourishments are studied (Figure 1). The innovative aspect of our approach lies in the integration of these research projects through interdisciplinary research questions. At the same time, we incorporate the wishes of public and private parties. These include the benefits they wish to exploit from the coastal system, such as protection against flooding by the dunes; so-called ecosystem services. In our work, we show that the concept of ecosystem services is useful to bridge the gap between the various research disciplines and parties involved.