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A hierarchical approach to the examination of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem service flows across coastal margins
THE "CBESS" PROJECT
THE "CBESS" PROJECT
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. Most pressingly, of all the UK's many and varied landscapes, it is our coastal systems that are most immediately sensitive to climate change. As global temperatures increase, sea levels will rise and the forces experienced where land and sea meet will become more destructive. Salt marshes, mudflats, beaches and rocky shores will be affected. Of these areas, the most sensitive are the mudflats and salt marshes that are common features of coastal systems, and which comprise just over half of the UK's total estuarine area. Not only do these landscapes support a wide range of economically valuable animal and plant species, they also act as sites of carbon storage, nutrient recycling, and pollutant capture and destruction. Their preservation is of the utmost importance, requiring active and informed management to save them for future generations. The Natural Environment Research Council's call to help understand the landscape-scale links between the functions that these systems provide (ecosystem service flows) and the organisms that help provide these services (biodiversity stocks) offers an important opportunity to move beyond most previous work in this field, which has been conducted at small or laboratory scales. Coastal managers require evidence to understand how ecosystem service flows operate at much larger spatial scales, e.g. entire salt marshes or regions of intertidal flat and salt marshes. The CBESS project will help deliver this understanding.