Predicting the Resilence of Coastal Habitats to Climate Change

Freshwater coastal wetlands (such as dune "slack") are highly biodiverse and support many rare UK plants, invertebrate and vertebrate species. Their diversity is due to the key influence of groundwater and the hydrological regime of the soil. They are, however, severely threatened by human activities, in particular climate change and resulting sea level rise. The extend of these habitats has declined by 30% at key sites, over 20 years. As a result, there is an urgent need to understand the potential impacts of future environmental change on these conservation-priority habitats.
Sea level is rising at 3 mm per year and the rate is accelerating. Future predictions have considerable uncertainty, but experts now believe the rise could exceed 1 m by 2100 (Bamber et all 2019) in terms of coastal ecology, such a rise would have a huge impact on the coastline, and would extend inland due to groundwater dynamics being perturbed. This project aims to consider the impact of future sea-level rise on vegetation in freshwater coastal wetlands.