Stemming the rising tide: The protective role of saltmarshes

Project Information

STORM

Grant agreement ID: 623720

Project closed

Start date 1 January 2015

End date 31 December 2016

Funded under

• Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Total cost € 309 235,20

EU contribution € 309 235,20

Coordinated by

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

Objective

Sea level rise and the associated flooding of coastal regions are predicted to lead to severe impacts in many European countries. It is recognised that coastal habitats will play a vital role in mitigating the effects of sea level rise, through increasing sediment accretion rates and thus surface elevation. In Europe, saltmarshes are the primary vegetated coastal habitat and are widely distributed along the European coastline. Both geological evidence from the Holocene, when sea levels rose quickly and significantly and models of contemporary sea level rise suggest that saltmarshes are able to keep pace with sea level rise when sediment supply is sufficient, thus protecting inland habitats from inundation. Saltmarshes have also been shown to be very effective at attenuating wave energy during storm surges. Vertical accretion rates in vegetated coastal habitats are the result of complex interactions between geomorphological (e.g. geological subsidence, sedimentation rates) and biological processes (e.g. root growth and organic matter accumulation and thus require a multidisciplinary research approach. Salt marsh growth and physiology can be an important driver of change in vertical accretion but the lack of data on biological processes, especially belowground, has been identified as a confounding factor for salt marsh models. This project is academically innovative, as it will simultaneously determine the role of biological processes (both above and below ground) and geomorphological processes in the overall changes to vertical accretion under different global change scenarios and incorporate those into existing salt marsh evolution and surface elevation models that predict the vulnerability of coastal areas to sea level rise.

Fields of science

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.

• natural sciences › earth and related environmental sciences › geology › sedimentology
• engineering and technology › environmental engineering › energy and fuels › renewable energy › hydroelectricity › marine energy › wave power
• medical and health sciences › basic medicine › physiology

Programme(s)

• FP7-PEOPLE - Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Topic(s)

• FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF - Marie Curie Action: "International Incoming Fellowships"

Call for proposal

FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

MC-IIF - International Incoming Fellowships (IIF)

Coordinator

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

• EU contribution: € 309 235,20
• Address: TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS ; CB2 1TN Cambridge ; United Kingdom
• Region: East of England › East Anglia › Cambridgeshire CC
• Activity type: Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
• Administrative Contact: Renata Schaeffer (Ms.)
• Total cost: No data