Topic 4: Coastal Zones at a Time of Global Change

About Topic 4

Mission:

Topic 4 develops multi-use scenarios for sustainable coastal systems with climate change to enhance our understanding and to support science-based decision-making. Considering international frameworks and agreements such as the SDGs, the Sendai Framework and the Paris Agreement, Topic 4 research focuses on the process understanding of energy and matter fluxes across compartments, their impacts on ecosystems functioning and ultimately on human societies. The ambitious integrated systems approach includes single and multiple stressors or drivers, considering the influence of human activities and climate change. New scientific evidence will contribute to identifying trade-offs in the system, informing decision-makers and will support the development of new and enhanced governance structures.

Our focus:

Coastal systems are also rapidly and, in some cases, catastrophically changing - forced by climatic, environmental and socio-economic drivers. There is an urgency to limit climate change and to adapt to future states of the coasts (Paris Agreement), reduce the risk for human communities and their coast-dependent livelihoods (Sendai Framework), and to plan for a future and sustainable state of the coasts characterized by increasing and accelerated urbanization (SDGs). Furthermore, the EU's 'Blue Growth' strategy and other sectorial ambitions require the sustainable development of coastal systems with its high potential for sustaining jobs and economic development. Linking international policy to local action is critical to achieving healthy coastal systems in the future.
Topic 4 will initiate and further develop platforms and methods for integrated observation, predictive modeling tools, and novel system-analysis. T4 establishes science-based information streams and packages for different plausible and desirable future states of coastal systems. These will support specific management decisions and coastal system governance. The analysis is not limited to single stressors and drivers but uses novel approaches to address the entire system dynamics and integrate the effects and feedback of human needs and activities as part of the coastal system. lt studies the continuum of climate - environment - organism - ecosystems to the entire coastal habitat, including anthropogenic impacts and societal needs across spatial scales, while considering the past, present and future.

The development of pathways towards the desired futures is intended to inform multi-level decision- and policymaking in the pubic and private sectors. It will consider common and global policy benchmarks, e.g. the IPCC scenarios for a 1.5°C or 2°C warmer world. This Topic creates research framework within which the potential risk resulting from actions along the pathways, including consequences for marine resource utilization, offshore energy production, marine aquaculture, and water quality will be considered.

Highlights

Feedbacks in the land-ocean transition

Influence of erosion on the oceanic CO2 storage capacity

Alkalinity generation from rock weathering modulates Earth’s climate at geological time scales. Particularly challenging remains the discrimination of climatic and erosional influences. Based on global observations, here we uncover the role of erosion rate in governing riverine alkalinity, accompanied by areal proportion of carbonate, mean annual temperature, catchment area, and soil regolith thickness. We show that the weathering flux to the ocean will be significantly altered by climate warming as early as 2100, by up to 68% depending on the environmental conditions, constituting a sudden feedback of ocean CO2 sequestration to climate.

Implementing the Energy Policy Change

Global and regional stressors affect planktonic communities

Structure

Graphic Representation of Subtopics

Subtopics in detail

The coastal links ocean, atmosphere, and land, and register change in all of these three Earth system compartments. This subtopic will differentiate the effects of climate change and human regimes in regional land-sea-atmosphere transition system characteristics of significant ongoing or expected climatic and anthropogenic pressures. Research here focuses on the sources, transport, turnover, input, and exchange of energy and matter, both natural and anthropogenic in origin and mediation. Knowledge from long-term data and previous research will form the fundament of the evaluation of effects of futures change. System-based analyses will be conducted and will result in a consistent assessment of multi-decadal trajectories of degradation and recovery regimes for entire catchments from source to sea. The outcomes will provide the scientific basis for tailored mitigation and adaptation options, specifically with respect to the role of coastal seas for carbon and nutrient fluxes, pollution, ocean health, as well as energy fluxes.

Spokesperson:Helmuth Thomas (Hereon), Sabine Kasten (AWI), Norbert Kamjunke (UFZ)

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Coastal systems face a plethora of different natural and anthropogenic stressors, usages and demands (summarized as drivers), which together impact the geophysical environment, biogeochemical cycling and organisms in a multitude of complex inter-linked ways. As interactions between drivers are often non-linear, the combined effects on these multiple drivers are virtually impossible to explain and predict from our current understanding of linear superposition. This necessitates research focusing on multiple drivers in a temporally dynamic environment with complex communities. As these interacting drivers manifest across multiple physical and biological scales, from shifting atmospheric conditions, hydrographic and morphodynamic changes to ecosystems and species changes, the interdisciplinary approach pursued in this subtopic is crucial. We will focus on the effects of multiple natural and anthropogenic drivers on the functioning of coastal ecosystems in the temperate and polar coasts areas. We will in particular use the long-term knowledge accumulated for our areas of foci and the information gathered from long-term data and previous research programs as fundament for the evaluation of effects of future change. Ecosystem impacts will be studied at different levels of complexity ranging from within-individuals scales, using appropriate –omic approaches, to between-species scales (ecological stoichiometry, trophic interactions, and biodiversity), through to complete ecosystems.

Spokesperson: Maarten Boersma (AWI), Corinna Schrum (Hereon)

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Subtopic 4.3 inspires climate services and product development for current and future human activities and sustainable development of coastal regions and its associated marine resources. It proposes science-society innovation to support cross-sectoral management in priority sectors such as water, food production (marine aquaculture), and energy. It also advances the generation and integration of data and information for climate change adaptation. Science-based decision-making requires innovative tools, methods, and frameworks that can facilitate and guide coastal management, which represent all relevant components including climate, resource use (e.g. marine aquaculture), hydrology, soils, forests, ecosystems, economy and (marine and urban) spatial planning. Pressing questions on multi-use of costal spaces and marine resource use also have a temporal component as their underlying drivers may influenced by climate change. Knowledge from long-term studies and data will act as a basis for the evaluation of the effects of future change on the needs of stakeholders, for example in terms of fisheries. Linking present and future states of key components of the coastal and shelf sea systems will be achieved by integrated regional modeling systems.

Spokesperson: Bela H. Buck (AWI), Jörg Cortekar (Hereon)

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Links to CARFS/CCA

REKLIM (Helmholtz-Forschungsverbund Regionale Klimaänderungen und Mensch)
HI-CAM (Helmholtz Climate Initiative)
Resilient Urban Spaces
MACE (Mainstreaming Environmental Assessment for Complex Exposure)
Joint Lab-ExaESM (Joint Lab Exascale Earth System Modelling)
Bioeconomy meets Energy
MOSES (Modular Observation Solutions for Earth Systems)
ESM (Earth System Modeling )
Digital Earth
EXTREMES (Extreme Events in a Changing World)