Do you want to do cutting edge research that is also useful for improving ecosystem services in our coastal cities and towns? Are you interested in using marine ecology and coastal geomorphology science to enhance ecosystem services on coastal engineering assets? If yes, this project will hopefully excite and appeal to you!
Climate change is increasing pressure on urban coasts where hard infrastructure, such as seawalls and rock revetments are used for coastal protection. UK government strategies state that infrastructure needs to be sustainable and work with nature. Urban ecosystems, including coastal engineering infrastructure, have significantly lower biodiversity than natural habitats. The good news is that research shows that hard infrastructure can be designed to improve biodiversity. This project will four key research and practice gaps in eco-engineering:
1. Scaling up from experimental studies to operational, whole engineering structure application.
To date eco-engineering research has been at the experimental scale. What is urgently needed is for this research to be scaled up to look at the biodiversity benefits of scaled eco-engineering applications on large scale engineering projects. This project has access to two of the largest government projects applying eco-engineering methods at scale – to test their effectiveness.
2. Biology – Material choice interactions.
One of the lesser studied topics in eco-engineering is measuring the interactions between biota and rock /concrete materials. Here field and laboratory experiments will be undertaken on a range of rock and concrete materials commonly used in coastal engineering to quantify differential bioerosion rates. Here the student will investigate the species, ecological enhancement, spatial arrangement and density of grazer and intervention to best control nuisance algae an in so doing reduce maintenance costs and ecological impacts. These data would advance ecology and biogeomorphology science, and also help identify which materials are best suited for ecological enhancement in operational applications.
3. Bioeroders as ‘Natural Cleaners’
Some structures, such as access slipways, steps on piers and ferry routes, require routine maintenance to clean these surfaces to remove algae which causes slip hazards for people. These procedures are economically costly and can damage marine life. What if we can use ecology to create a biological ‘natural cleaning’ solution? Here the student will investigate this using experiments to identify the best biological controls of nuisance algae.
4. Facilitating widespread implementation of eco-engineering in operational practice.
One of the largest eco-engineering challenges is operationalizing the toolbox of eco-engineering interventions into large scale commercial projects. These implementation challenges can happen across the life cycle of a project from conception, through to detailed design, tendering and construction. The student will work with the Environment Agency (case partner) to co-produce a best practice routemap for improving application in operational practice.
For further information see: https://www.iapetus2.ac.uk/studentships/scaling-up-greening-the-grey-and-eco-engineering-science-through-partnership-with-coastal-infrastructure-asset-managers-creating-co-benefits-for-science-and-operational-practice/
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