Shortlisted for the 2025 Southwood Prize
Concerning the analysis
Overview
Coastal areas are more and more weak to hazards equivalent to erosion and flooding, and there may be rising recognition that nature-based approaches can play an essential function in coastal safety as a result of they’ll adapt to altering environmental circumstances. As new approaches are developed, it is very important take a look at how effectively they carry out beneath totally different environmental contexts and to make sure they maximise ecological advantages whereas avoiding pointless engineering.
This paper was the primary information chapter in my PhD thesis, which occurred in Victoria, Australia, beneath the supervision of Drs. Rebecca Morris and Stephen Swearer. Within the research, ecologically engineered concrete pods had been deployed at three eroding websites, and Avicennia marina propagules and seedlings had been planted each inside and behind these buildings. We needed to grasp whether or not the pods might improve mangrove survival and likewise facilitate pure recruitment.
What we discovered was that the outcomes different enormously between websites. Native environmental circumstances strongly influenced survival and recruitment, usually overriding the results of structural design. This highlighted how tough it may be to engineer round basic environmental constraints in dynamic coastal methods.
Subsequent steps and broader implications
Though our research gives insights into how hybrid ecological engineering buildings can assist mangrove institution, there are nonetheless essential inquiries to discover. Throughout the undertaking, we collected further information utilizing drone surveys and floor elevation tables, which can be utilized to look at patterns of sediment accretion and erosion across the buildings. Analysing these information might reveal whether or not the pods assist stabilise sediments and assist shoreline improvement, or whether or not they unintentionally promote erosion, as has been noticed with laborious coastal buildings.
Our findings even have sensible implications for coastal managers and policymakers who’re exploring nature-based approaches to coastal safety. Defending and restoring present mangrove habitats stays the simplest technique for sustaining ecosystem functioning and coastal resilience. Nonetheless, relying solely on pure restoration could not at all times be possible, notably as a result of mangrove forests take time to ascertain and attain densities that present significant coastal safety.
Hybrid approaches could subsequently play an essential function in sure contexts, however their success is extremely depending on native environmental circumstances. Integrating ecological understanding into present coastal planning frameworks might assist information the place and the way hybrid options like mangrove pods might be utilized most successfully.
Concerning the writer
Present place
I’m at present a postdoctoral researcher at College Faculty Cork working with Drs. Louise Firth and Antony Knights. My present analysis continues to discover nature-based coastal safety, specializing in testing modular hybrid mixtures of eco-engineering components to scale back erosion and facilitate the rehabilitation of saltmarsh habitats. The undertaking additionally goals to develop indicators to judge the ecological and engineering efficiency of those approaches, whereas selling collaboration by way of multi-stakeholder co-design.
Whereas a lot of my work focuses on evaluating hybrid approaches to coastal safety, I’m notably within the coastal processes that form environmental outcomes. I hope that my analysis can contribute to refining the design and software of those approaches, to allow them to be extra reliably built-in into broader coastal safety methods.
Getting concerned in ecology
My curiosity in ecology started throughout my Honours undertaking on the Nationwide College of Singapore, the place I studied how human-altered environmental circumstances affect prawn behaviour. I later moved into the sphere of ecological engineering, engaged on methods to switch human-made coastal buildings to reinforce their ecological worth.
By means of this work, I turned more and more within the impacts of urbanisation on aquatic environments and in growing sensible approaches to mitigate these impacts. For my PhD analysis, I centered on nature-based coastal safety throughout websites in Singapore and Victoria, Australia, and likewise examined the social elements that will affect the implementation of those approaches.
Learn the complete article ‘Effectiveness of novel hybrid mangrove residing shorelines is context dependent’ in Journal of Utilized Ecology.
Discover the opposite early profession researchers and their articles which were shortlisted for the 2025 Southwood Prize right here!
