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Coastal Habitats, Shallow Seas and Inland Saline Steppes: Ecology, Distribution, Threats and Challenges

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Perspectives for Biodiversity and Ecosystems

Part of the book series: Environmental Challenges and Solutions ((ECAS))

Abstract

Coastal and inland saline habitats are distributed worldwide. The coastal habitats occur at the border between land and sea in various landscape formations, such as rocky shores, shallow coasts and protected bays, as far as to offshore areas. The inland saline habitats are predominantly part of inland steppe ecosystems. The complex underlying geomorphology, ecology, specialized flora and fauna, temporal and spatial dynamic, diverse ecosystem services and the general importance for human populations, settlements, fisheries, trades, and tourism make coastal habitats a unique part of the world’s landscape.

In this chapter, we briefly outline the historic significance of coastal habitats and their ecosystem functions and services. We describe recent threats affecting coastal habitats and their flora and fauna. Owing to their spatially close relation or similarities in vegetation composition to saltmarshes, we additionally describe the characteristics of shallow sea communities and inland saline steppe vegetation.

Today, many of the characteristic plant and animal species showing special adaptations with respect to challenging environmental, as well as subtidal, coastal and inland saline habitats are threatened worldwide and thus, are under serious pressure. Main threats comprise residential and commercial building development, artificial coastal defence, tourism, overexploitation, pollution, increasing pressure of invasive and other problematic species, anthropogenic influence on water dynamics and climate-change induced changes in coastal dynamics.

Theoretically, many climate-related extremes such as floods and hurricanes imply a much higher risk for humans and human buildings at the coast than for natural habitats which evolved under dynamic conditions and are adopted to strong coastal wind and water dynamics. However, as the natural resilience of these habitats is now often impaired by anthropogenic factors and climate extremes facilitate previously unknown variation to natural dynamics, climate change has become a growing threat to coastal ecosystems.

We outline past and currently applied projects and activities, which we perceive as promising examples of science-based nature conservation measures in relation to main threats and socio-economic issues. We conclude with discussing future perspectives of coastal habitats on global and regional scale, in the light of global change, i.e. human influence on natural dynamics, land use change, climate change, and coastal protection.

Solutions to reduce the pressure on coastal habitats and biota comprise, among others, e.g. to enlarge nature reserves and zero-use zones, to reduce human impact at landscape scales, and to give space for natural dynamics. Pollution and the impact of fertilizers may be locally reduced by buffer zones and technological solutions. However, the local interest in reducing sewage and nutrient release can only be limited by national or supra-national recycling policies and related regulations.

One of the problems which cannot easily be solved is the irreversible introduction of alien species. Invasion of native biota can also become a problem if environmental conditions are altered. In this case every problem has to be monitored at regional scales and managed by hand, if possible.

At the same time, we assume that current tendencies, e.g. growing settlements and cities at the coasts, increasing tourism and climate change cannot be reversed in a short time.

Furthermore, political decisions are often unpredictable.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Ricarda Pätsch, University of Alberta, and Andreas Moll, University of Hamburg, for elaborate and valuable input and recommendations on a former version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Environmental Education, University of Flensburg (EUF), Flensburg, Germany

    Carsten Hobohm

  2. Wageningen University and Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Joop Schaminée

  3. Vegetation, Forest and Landscape Ecology Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Nils van Rooijen

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Correspondence to Carsten Hobohm .

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    Carsten Hobohm

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Hobohm, C., Schaminée, J., van Rooijen, N. (2021). Coastal Habitats, Shallow Seas and Inland Saline Steppes: Ecology, Distribution, Threats and Challenges. In: Hobohm, C. (eds) Perspectives for Biodiversity and Ecosystems. Environmental Challenges and Solutions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57710-0_12

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