Life on the rocks: biodiversity assessments on breakwaters

Huidige versie van 23 mei 2018 om 14:14

The Netherlands have been building dikes to protect their country from flooding events for a long time. Although the province of Zeeland is currently well protected with dikes along its estuaries, these regularly need to be replaced or reinforced. Currently, dikes and breakwaters are primarily designed from a civil engineering perspective. The main focus is on flood protection and water management. The Building for Nature approach aims at innovating the design of coastal protection structures in order to increase their nature values. Dikes with this type of design are called rich dikes, or rich revetments. These revetments can be of more interest to other users such as divers, fishermen or aquaculture.

In 2016 as part of the Buitendijks-project funded by the province of Zeeland several new breakwaters were placed in the Western Scheldt in order to protect the shore from erosion and increase the area of intertidal mudflats. At these breakwaters, the added value to nature of several innovative types of building materials will be tested at an experimental scale. In this project you will help in de development and placement of the experimental set-up and monitor the initial development of seaweeds and sessile invertebrates.

Research type: Field work and desk analysis

Research level: Minor or Internship

Prerequisite: Interest in aquatic ecology

Partners: NIOZ, Deltares

Client: Tim van Oijen

Start date:	september 1, 2018
End date:	februari 1, 2019

@@ Regel 1: / Regel 1: @@
-The Netherlands have been using dikes to protect their country from flooding events for a long time. Although the province of Zeeland is currently protected from flooding due to the dikes that have been constructed along its estuaries, these dikes are still being enforced with hard structures such as asphalt. Often, mastic asphalt is being applied on the lower parts of the dike to enforce the foreshores of the dike. Asphalt has a bad reputation when it comes to facilitating ecology of the foreshore, in part due to its structure and temperature. The foreshores of the dikes of Zeeland often border Natura 2000 areas and can have interesting ecology with for example with different weeds and shellfish. Since asphalt is being applied regularly in the field, it is important to improve the design of asphalt for ecology purposes while maintaining safety. In order to find the driving factors behind organisms growing on this type of asphalt current ecology on these substrates need to be monitored along with its environmental conditions.During the internship you will do field work  along different (predetermined) dike areas in Zeeland (mainly at Zierikzee, De Val) and offshore frames installed with asphalt tiles at the NIOZ site. You will do an inventory of the ecological communities growing on the asphalt enforced areas of the lower dike based on community descriptions, and take pictures of these communities. Also the physical aspects of the different dikes and the mastic asphalt have to be described to build up a database in a Geographical Information System. Image classification of the pictures in GIS is also part of the job.You also will analyze your findings along with the environmental conditions that you have measured. The results could be useful for improving the design of mastic  asphalt on dikes for both safety and ecology.
+The Netherlands have been building dikes to protect their country from flooding events for a long time. Although the province of Zeeland is currently well protected with dikes along its estuaries, these regularly need to be replaced or reinforced. Currently, dikes and breakwaters are primarily designed from a civil engineering perspective. The main focus is on flood protection and water management. The Building for Nature approach aims at innovating the design of coastal protection structures in order to increase their nature values. Dikes with this type of design are called rich dikes, or rich revetments. These revetments can be of more interest to other users such as divers, fishermen or aquaculture.
-'''Research type:''' Ecological and Physical field work and data analysis (Zeeland, HZ)
+In 2016 as part of the Buitendijks-project funded by the province of Zeeland several new breakwaters were placed in the Western Scheldt in order to protect the shore from erosion and increase the area of intertidal mudflats. At these breakwaters, the added value to nature of several innovative types of building materials will be tested at an experimental scale. In this project you will help in de development and placement of the experimental set-up and monitor the initial development of seaweeds and sessile invertebrates.
+'''Research type:''' Field work and desk analysis
 '''Research level:''' Minor or Internship
-'''Prerequisite:''' Interest in aquatic ecology and dikes
+'''Prerequisite:''' Interest in aquatic ecology
-'''Partners:''' Deltares, HZ, Stichting Anemoon
+'''Partners:''' NIOZ, Deltares
-'''Client:''' Edwin Paree
+'''Client:''' Tim van Oijen
 {{Project config}}
 {{Project
 |Supercontext=Building with Nature
 |Project type=Standaard
-|Name=Building for nature: biodiversity on dikes
+|Name=Life on the rocks: biodiversity assessments on breakwaters
-|Start date=August 2017
+|Start date=2018/09/01
-|End date=February 2018
+|End date=2019/02/01
-|Summary=Monitoring the ecological development on revetments that were designed to support nature
+|Summary=Monitoring the ecological development on breakwaters in the Western Scheldt
 Research type: Field work and desk analysis
@@ Regel 24: / Regel 26: @@
 Prerequisite: Interest in aquatic ecology
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