COASTFRAG - Impact of habitat fragmentation and loss on coastal ecosystems and implications for sustainable management under climate change

Worldwide, the environment is changing rapidly due to activities of the growing human population, with climate change being a major concern. As more and more people settle along the coast, human-induced pressures on coastal waters increase. As a result, we see habitat loss and fragmentation, contributing to a dramatic decline in biodiversity and changes to how ecosystems function worldwide. As a consequence, the wealth we can derive from the ocean (through the Blue Growth policy) is at risk and it is getting increasingly harder to achieve several of the targets defined by the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda. The rockweed beds are part of the BLUE FORESTS, which are the underwater vegetated habitats found all around the globe. Rockweeds cover the rocky shores, providing many different ecosystem services and forming the basis for several SDG targets, such as raw material for humans (including food, animal feed and fertilizers), food and shelter for a variety of species and regulation of global climate through carbon storage. We know that these ecosystems are under pressure from climate change and human activities, but we still do not fully understand the effects of these pressures. COASTFRAG is a research project that started in 2021 and will last through 2024. During this period the project will work to improve our knowledge of what is needed to protect blue forests and the services they provide. The status of the work as of November 2023 is that alle the fieldwork has been finalized in all regions. All partners (in Norway, Estonia, Great Britain and Spain) have collected data and carried out experiments on variation and recovery (after clearing) in biological communities associated with intertidal ecosystems under different environmental conditions, human pressures and shifts in fish predator pressure. All partners have mapped their study areas with drones, and a fragmentation index for intertidal seaweed communities is under development. The statistical analyses are ongoing. In 2023, we have had several master students, one in Norway, and we were happy be able to have two students and a scientist exchanged (as part of the project’s exchange funding) to the NIVA mesocosm facility outside Oslo. We also have a PhD student visiting NIVA (Norway, also as part of the exchange funding), working on function traits diversity analyses. This is, as far as we know, the first time that functional traits are assigned jointly to both faunal and algal species to such a big dataset covering so many regions across Europe.

Worldwide, the environment is undergoing rapid changes due to activities of the growing human population, with climate change being a major concern. As more and more people settle along the coast, human-induced pressures also increase, causing habitat loss and fragmentation. These pressures lead to a dramatic decline in biodiversity and changes to ecosystem functioning worldwide. This in turn limits the potential for Blue Growth and undermines the progress towards several of the assessed targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Blue forests, such as seaweeds, kelp forests, seagrass meadows, salt marshes and mangroves, are coastal vegetated habitats that cover huge areas around the globe, providing many different types of ecosystem services. Littoral seaweeds, covering the rocky shores everywhere, form the basis for many of the SDG targets by providing raw material for humans (including food, animal feed and fertilizers), food and shelter for a variety of species and by regulating global climate through carbon storage and sequestration. These ecosystems are experiencing multiple pressures caused by climate change and human activities, but the effect of this is largely unexplored. The overall aim of COASTFRAG is to contribute with the knowledge base needed to safeguard the Blue forests’ ecosystem services and ensure a long-term sustainable Blue growth. To do so, we will study how pressures, individually and together, impact seaweed communities across Europe. The research approach includes field investigations in the littoral zone, involving observations and experiments at different spatial scales, mesocosms experiments, numerical/statistical analyses, predictive models and projections for climate change effects. The findings will be communicated to a wider audience, including to support regional and habitat specific management strategies.