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European Land-Ocean Interaction Studies (ELOISE)

The cluster comprises 25 current projects. Their total EU contribution is over 43 M€

ELOISE (European Land-Ocean Interaction Studies) was established by the European Commission in 1994 and jointly implemented by the MAST, and Environment and Climate Programmes. It constitutes the official EU contribution to the LOICZ Core Project of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

ELOISE has served to co-ordinate European research on coastal ecosystems by focusing on the important question of how the land-ocean interaction operates and on how this is influenced by human activities. This cluster is the largest coastal research initiative in the world combining research on marine problems with work on processes in catchment basins.

The revision of the Work Programme put emphasis on the development of integrated coastal management concepts, strategies, practices and tools for the better use, monitoring and management of the coastal area through integration of interrelated processes. The ELOISE cluster includes since then also projects on coastal EVOLUTION and PROTECTION in order to promote the integration among projects traditionally focused on coastal morphology, evolution and protection (coastal engineering) and the ones on ecological processes and ecosystem dynamics.

Structure of the cluster

ELOISE comprises 25 current FP5 projects (and 54 projects in total from its inception) which are formally linked together via a common attachment to the Description of Work of each project.

The EU contribution for the 25 FP5 projects is 43.5 M€, while the Community funding of the total 54 projects is about 75 M€..

Fifteen projects address coastal marine ecosystems and four projects, grouped in Coastal EVOLUTION and PROTECTION, address coastal morphodynamics and protection (DELOS, HUMOR, PROTECT and CoastView). These 19 projects are funded within Key Action 3 and are listed in the table at the end.

Six others address catchment basin processes and as such are funded under Key Action 1. These are:

COMET (Composition of dissolved organic matter and its interaction with metals and ultraviolet radiation in river-ocean systems: impact on the microbial food web),
INCA (Integrated Nitrogen Model for European Catchments),
BEAM (Bridging effects of mixtures to ecosystem situations and regulations),
EUROCAT (European Catchments: Catchments changes and their impact on the coast),
DANUBS (Nutrient Management in the Danube Basin and its impact on the Black Sea),
STREAMES (Human effects on nutrient cycling in fluvial ecosystems: Development of an Expert System to assess stream water quality management at reach scale).

The recent projects focus on: a) the impact of the Directive on Urban Wastewater Treatment on coastal ecosystems, b) impact of nitrate load to facilitate implementation of the Directive on Nitrate Discharge, c) the scientific underpinning of the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and d) the development of new tools for an integrated coastal zone management.

Contact person: Christos Fragakis

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