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Abstract:
Coastal areas in the North Sea are subject to continuously developing activities such as, among others, wind farming, transportation, river regulations and transport. The resulting environmental changes interact with those caused by the local natural variability and interaction with the open ocean. Coastal areas are representatives of the biogeochemically most active regions, incorporating interactions between land and ocean, sediment dynamics and morphodynamics. The mix between modelling and observations is considered as the most efficient tool to develop up-to-date coastal products, such as predictions and estimates of coastal and estuarine states, and scientific support for activities and decision making. The functioning of the current hydro- and sediment dynamic and biogeochemical properties of the German Bight estuaries is evaluated. Furthermore, for coastal protection, natural habitats such as mussel beds and seagrass beds increasingly get into focus in the function of nature based solutions to improve the climate adaptability of the Wadden Sea. They have the potential to implicitly support classical engineered coastal protection by means of ecologically valuable and cost-effective measures The current and potential future role of seagrass for coastal risk reduction is explored. The aim is to assess the current impact of coastal vegetation on hydro- and sediment dynamics against the situation without seagrass. Different seagrass expansion what-if scenarios demonstrate how increased coastal seagrass coverage can impact sedimentation and most effectively attenuate the incoming energy to help to reduce the risks of coastal flooding and erosion and implicitly reduce the risk of coastal flooding.
