Interdisciplinarity is at the heart of DUNES. The project approached coastal areas through the lens of its team different disciplines – which are not usually combined – to propose a kaleidoscopic view of dunes, highlighting their human and non-human features and contexts. This was done at a global scale, taking into account multiple variables, analysing political, economic, social, cultural issues in relation to climate, geomorphology, geology, and vegetation. Past examples were recovered to illustrate the evolution of coastal areas, explain present situations and inform future management strategies. DUNES publications represent a significant advance in coastal history research, as this is a fairly new research area. They are also a step beyond the state of the art for the ecological and geological sciences interested in beach-dune systems. There has been plenty of science on dunes, but not much on their history, until now. The papers published sought to fill this gap by providing new or more complete information on dune evolution, mobility, and stabilization in the last three centuries. In addition, the book A Global Environmental History of Coastal Dunes, drinking from the five-year collective developments of the project, narrates in an accessible language the history of several coastal dune fields in the five continents, explaining their many interrelationships, making comparisons and reflecting, in the light of their past contexts, on their present situation, and questioning, given their co-evolution with humans, the current management strategies aimed at using them for coastal protection, enhancement of native biodiversity, and tourism/recreational areas. To foster the outreach of DUNES, the information collected during the project was inserted in the Coastal History Open Archive, which is an important tool for scientists and all of those interested in past information about dunes and coastal areas to complement and support scientific studies, technical reports, and the preparation of legislation, courses, touristic guides, etc. In summary, the greatest achievement of DUNES is to show how history, namely the history of coastal dunes, is fundamental to having a complete picture of present coasts and their evolution, to provide past examples that speak to current concerns, and to make available historical data that most coastal scientists and managers were not aware of and now are able to use.
