Climate change and coastal management -ELOISE conclusions

Climate Change and Coastal Management
Synthesis Results

6. Conclusions

The major objectives outlined in the ELOISE science plan were:

1. Understanding the significance of the coastal zone in global change
2. Appraising human impacts on coastal seas
3. Finding a strategic approach for sustainable coastal zone management
4. Developing a robust framework for Europe's coastal zone science.

Here, we revisit those objectives, briefly appraising the extent of the contribution of ELOISE projects in the light of today's understanding of climate change and its expected impacts on the region.

1. Understanding the coastal zone

The concerted efforts of pan-European science over the last decade have undeniably led to major advances in the understanding of ecosystem processes. From a climate change perspective, the most important progress has been made in the contribution to the understanding of the great cycles of nutrients and carbon through key reservoirs (land, biosphere, ocean and atmosphere), and the causes and extents of indirect impacts and non-linear interactions. Also important is the inclusion of this knowledge into process models and scenarios.

2. Human Impacts

A common theme in all the ELOISE projects is recognition that human activities change water chemistry and aquatic ecosystems. Most projects have focused on appraising those changes (recognising that many of those changes have negative impacts on the natural systems that compete for coastal zone space with human society). The physical boundary conditions of coastal systems are vulnerable to climate change, yet human interventions will shape the extent to which the natural environment can re-establish a stable equilibrium. A potentially important aspect that the ELOISE programme addresses only very superficially is the fact that the deeper knowledge of human impacts uncovered here leads to further questions of the evaluation and prioritisation of options for adaptation or mitigative action. Of course these questions are a matter for society as a whole, not just for scientists, but scientists are in a unique position to make judgments about the value of different ecosystems (c.f. O’Neill, 1993), and ELOISE should be seen as a vehicle for a concerted input to these wider debates.

3. Integration for sustainabilty in the coastal zone

Long time-scale changes were not explicitly in the original ELOISE remit, but we now have the best-ever "present state" analysis. Some projects have explicitly looked at the links between the natural and human systems, integrating socio-economic analysis with the natural sciences. The development of integrated management tools across the spatial continuum from land to sea, addressing loadings and forcings of different types, are an attempt to manipulate the impacts of human activities in a positive way, to counteract unsustainable negative impacts. The pressures-impacts-responses framework for the interface between human activities and natural systems that is common to many of the ELOISE projects allows for knowledge transfer among the projects, with more robust comparison and testing across regions and sub-systems, and confers the potential benefit of ensuring that these tools can more efficiently interface with the latest generation of modular climate impacts modelling tools (e.g., the Tyndall Centre's Community Integrated Assessment Model, and the projected Europe-wide EVIA; see Leimbach and Jaeger, 2004).

4. Frameworks for the future

The fundamental value of process models has already been mentioned. In terms of global climate modelling, some ELOISE outputs do indeed make a contribution, but only in as much as the basic science is translated from 'raw' knowledge into parameterised process functions (e.g., for the interconnections between sulphur cycling in plankton blooms and cloud formation). The potential importance of ELOISE projects in the emergent integrated approaches to natural science has also been mentioned. There is a vital need for a focus on compatibility in scale and resolution of outputs. Next-generation climate impact modelling relies on “plug and play” models which ELOISE could provide. The bringing together of ‘tailor made’ models into a distributed framework is today’s priority, and research advances in institutions that have been involved in ELOISE programme may be vital in allowing the translation of research outputs into management-oriented models.

The issue of scaling (both up and down, in time and space) has also been identified, and significant moves towards addressing the technical and conceptual difficulties have already been made, in a consolidation workshop (ELOISE, 2003), and in ongoing applications of the project outputs. Where management and decision-support tools are used, these should be monitored and critically appraised over the longer term, to see to what extent they stay applicable under changing conditions.

A common theme in many projects is that they are fundamental ('pure') research, and indeed, fundamental questions about the functioning and form of the coastal zone remain unanswered. End users, including those who will implement responses to future climate change, need to know about the processes explored in ELOISE, but they need this knowledge to be translated. Whether end users are climate modellers, local managers or Europe's policy makers, a 'critical path' of translation from the raw science to usable outputs is needed. In some cases, there may be very few intermediate steps, but in many others, the end users are very distant. ELOISE has tackled this dilemma in several interfacing projects, bringing scientists into the process of developing informed management tools. The dissemination and consolidation of the science outputs must recognise the vital need for this type of appropriate, multi-level communication of important results.

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