Objective
To understand the mechanisms behind the rapid extension of dominant plant species as an indicator of disturbance by pollution (eutrophication) of salt marsh ecosystems.
Salt marshes are wetland ecosystems at the edge of land and sea. The soil is built from clay, including organic matter, deposited by tidal water movements. The decay of plants and the deposited organic matter results in mineralization and hence an increase in plant available nutrients. Thus succession and ecosystem dynamics strongly link up with natural processes like frequency and duration of inundation, rates of sedimentation and nutrient accumulation, and feature characteristic patterns of zonation of different plant communities related to their biogeochemical cycles. During the last decades anthropogenic eutrophication took place by an increased amount of suspended organic matter and from atmospheric deposition. The combined effects of natural and anthropogenic eutrophication might have disturbed the biogeochemical cycles to such an extent that the whole salt marsh ecosystem has dramatically changed resulting in the dominance of a few nitrophilous plant species in all sections of salt marsh zonation with a subsequent decrease in biodiversity both at the level of species and plant communities. The species complex of Elymus athericus/Elymus repens and their hybrid is regarded to be a good indicator for this disturbance.
The project envisages to better understand the mechanisms behind the eutrophication by the increase of knowledge about of biogeochemical cycles at the transition zone between land and sea. The amounts of organic matter and nutrients stored in different compartments of the salt marsh ecosystem and the fluxes between these compartments will be quantified. The fluxes towards and out of the system will be estimated. The methods involved will include work in the field in the Wadden Sea and in Portugal with supposed higher fluxes, and under controlled conditions in mesocosms, glass house and laboratory. Advanced techniques using 210Pb isotope for measurements of sedimentation rates and 15N/14N isotopes for measurements of fluxes will be used. The results enable the prediction of the effects on salt marsh ecosystems of nutrient input by sediments as a result of expected sea level rise, of an envisaged reduction in the nutrient input from atmospheric deposition and of nutrients dissolved in inundation water, and of the impact of heavy metals or management practices like grazing and cutting.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences geology sedimentology
- engineering and technology materials engineering
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences environmental sciences pollution
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
- social sciences economics and business business and management
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Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
9750 AA Haren
Netherlands
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.