Environmental Conditions at the Coast: Shoreline Ecosystems

Abstract

This part addresses the environmental conditions at the Southern Baltic Sea coast shoreline ecosystems providing knowledge of the natural conditions on which anthropogenic alterations act. The chapter starts off with some details on the geological formation of these coasts that build the geomorphological template on which ecosystems have established. Since this region has been covered by ice during the last glaciation, all landscapes and, thus, also the coastal ecosystems are comparably young. Due to the post-glacial dynamics, these coastal ecosystems are themselves highly dynamic on several temporal scales. Whereas cliffs change on millennial scales, dunes are much more dynamic and change on annual scales. In shallow low-lying sections peatlands developed and natural dynamics here would likely act on centennial scales. All the above temporal dynamics are strongly impeded by anthropogenic activities and can only rarely be observed today in the wild with strong implications for the development of the shoreline ecosystems in the future. On coastal peatlands long-term anthropo-zoogenic influence lead to the development of an alternative ecosystem. While under natural conditions plant species of brackish grasslands were confined to small areas below cliffs, grazing in reed belts over centuries caused the development of extensive areas of brackish grasslands featuring brackish specialist plant species. Today, the latter are rather rare because many of these areas have been diked for more intensive agricultural use in the past century.