Search results for "Coastal zone management"

Effectiveness of European Atlanto-Mediterranean MPAs: Do they accomplish the expected effects on populations, communities and ecosystems?

2008

The success of MPAs in conserving fishing resources and protecting marine biodiversity relies strongly on how well they meet their planned (or implicit) management goals. From a review of empirical studies aiming at assessing the ecological effects of Mediterranean and Macaronesian MPAs, we conclude that establishing an MPA is successful for (i) increasing the abundance/biomass, (ii) increasing the proportion of larger/older individuals, and (iii) enhancing the fecundity of commercially harvested populations; also, MPAs demonstrated to be effective for (iv) augmenting local fishery yields through biomass exportation from the protected area, and (v) inducing shifts in fish assemblage structu…

The Impact of Driving Forces and Protection Policies on Future Coastal Landscapes: A Case Study of Latvia

2011

Landscapes and related land cover changes are essential elements of sustainable coastal zone management in Europe and in Latvia. The issue of landscape protection, management and planning was promoted as a result of the adoption of the European Landscape Convention (2000), while the Recommendations concerning the Implementation of Integrated Coastal Zone Management were adopted by the European Community (2002) to address land use issues. The Recommendations also emphasise the need to recognise the threat to coastal zones posed by Climate Change. This paper aims to contribute to the enhancement of landscape and coastal zone management policies by addressing the changes in coastal landscapes.…

Management and research on plastic debris in Uruguayan Aquatic Systems: update and perspectives

2015

Synthetic plastics have become an indispensable component of modern life, and the amount of plastics disposal has increased dramatically as a result. With human population increasing, it is expected that the prevalence of plastic debris in the environment will also increase, unless sustainable daily habits are incorporated, waste management improved, and new alternative materials are discovered and popularized. To date, several reports show negative effects of plastic debris on marine and freshwater fauna (e.g. invertebrates, birds, turtles, marine mammals). Plastic are ubiquitous in the water column, deposited in fine sediments and enter the guts, respiratory structures and tissues of diff…

Bridging the knowledge gap on the distribution and typology of vermetid bioconstructions along the Maltese coastline : an updated assessment

2022

In the Maltese Islands, insufficient attention has been paid to vermetid reefs, endemic Mediterranean bioconstructions widely distributed along the southern part of the basin. As a result, this is a largely-overlooked coastal ecosystem despite the multitude of ecosystem services it provides. The perennial urban development in the Maltese Islands calls for the adoption of urgent action to protect coastal habitats, in particular bioconstructions that increase biodiversity and contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change. The objective of our study was to extensively document the presence and typology of the vermetid reef ecosystems along the coast of Malta and Gozo, assessing the oc…

ASPRACOAST: A model of integrated coastal zone management of the eastern part of the Gulf of Palermo (Sicily, Italy)

2009

Assessing Coastal Sustainability: A Bayesian Approach for Modeling and Estimating a Global Index for Measuring Risk

2013

Integrated Coastal Zone Management is an emerg- ing research area. The aim is to provide a global view of dif- ferent and heterogeneous aspects interacting in a geographical area. Decision Support Systems, integrating Computational Intelligence methods, can be successfully used to estimate use- ful anthropic and environmental indexes. Bayesian Networks have been widely used in the environmental science domain. In this paper a Bayesian model for estimating the Sustainable Coastal Index is presented. The designed Bayesian Network consists of 17 nodes, hierarchically organized in 4 layers. The first layer is initialized with the season and the physiographic region information. In the second la…

WebGIS Implementation for Dynamic Mapping and Visualization of Coastal Geospatial Data: A Case Study of BESS Project

2021

Within an E.U.-funded project, BESS (Pocket Beach Management and Remote Surveillance System), the notion of a geographic information system is an indispensable tool for managing the dynamics of georeferenced data and information for any form of territorial planning. This notion was further explored with the creation of a WebGIS portal that will allow local and regional stakeholders/authorities obtain an easy remote access tool to monitor the status of pocket beaches (PB) in the Maltese Archipelago and Sicily. In this paper, we provide a methodological approach for the implementation of a WebGIS necessary for very detailed dynamic mapping and visualization of geospatial coastal data

Coastal high-frequency radars in the Mediterranean - Part 2: Applications in support of science priorities and societal needs

2022

The Mediterranean Sea is a prominent climate-change hot spot, with many socioeconomically vital coastal areas being the most vulnerable targets for maritime safety, diverse met-ocean hazards and marine pollution. Providing an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution at wide coastal areas, high-frequency radars (HFRs) have been steadily gaining recognition as an effective land-based remote sensing technology for continuous monitoring of the surface circulation, increasingly waves and occasionally winds. HFR measurements have boosted the thorough scientific knowledge of coastal processes, also fostering a broad range of applications, which has promoted their integration in coastal ocean …