Climate change impact on catchment-coast processes and governance in the 21st Century

The aim of the project is to launch the exchange of research information on the environmental and economic changes in the coastal zone observed in Norway and on European scale. The parties to this exchange are the research community collaborating within t he IGBP/ IHDP Land Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) project on one side and the Norwegian research community largely within the CIENS program. Major focus will be placed on the assessment of information available on climate change as one of the major drivers of coastal ecosystems change in the Northern Europe. The integration of information and its synthesis will be carried out along 3 major LOICZ questions: 1. What are the implications of ecological and economic change for patterns of land and sea use? 2. What are the effects of changes to the flow of freshwater and materials to estuaries and shelf seas? 3. How can comparative analysis inform the improvement of the governance of human activities in changing coastal ecosystems? The project will also contribute to further development of the Norwegian CIENS research program on river-coast interactions (Theme 3).