Coastal greening of grey infrastructure: an update on the state-of-the-art

\ua9 2023 Emerald Publishing Limited: All rights reserved.In the marine environment, greening of grey infrastructure (GGI) is a rapidly growing field that attempts to encourage native marine life to colonize marine artificial structures to enhance biodiversity, thereby promoting ecosystem functioning and hence service provision. By designing multifunctional sea defences, breakwaters, port complexes and off-shore renewable energy installations, these structures can yield myriad environmental benefits, in particular, addressing UN SDG 14: Life below water. Whilst GGI has shown great promise and there is a growing evidence base, there remain many criticisms and knowledge gaps, and some feel that there is scope for GGI to be abused by developers to facilitate harmful development. Given the surge of research in this field in recent years, it is timely to review the literature to provide an update update on the state-of-the-art of the field in relation to the many criticisms and identify remaining knowledge gaps. Despite the rapid and significant advances made in this field, there is currently a lack of science and practice outside of academic sectors in the developed world, and there is a collective need for schemes that encourage intersectoral and transsectoral research, knowledge exchange, and capacity building to optimize GGI in the pursuit of contributing to sustainable development

Assessing the ecological impacts of invasive species based on their functional responses and abundances

Invasive species management requires allocation of limited resources towards the proactive mitigation of those species that could elicit the highest ecological impacts. However, we lack predictive capacity with respect to the identities and degree of ecological impacts of invasive species. Here, we combine the relative per capita effects and relative field abundances of invader as compared to native species into a new metric, “Relative Impact Potential” (RIP), and test whether this metric can reliably predict high impact invaders. This metric tests the impact of invaders relative to the baseline impacts of natives on the broader ecological community. We first derived the functional responses (i.e. per capita effects) of two ecologically damaging invasive fish species in Europe, the Ponto-Caspian round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) and Asian topmouth gudgeon (Pseudorasbora parva), and their native trophic analogues, the bullhead (Cottus gobio; also C. bairdi) and bitterling (Rhodeus amarus), towards several prey species. This establishes the existence and relative strengths of the predator-prey relationships. Then, we derived ecologically comparable field abundance estimates of the invader and native fish from surveys and literature. This establishes the multipliers for the above per capita effects. Despite both predators having known severe detrimental field impacts, their functional responses alone were of modest predictive power in this regard; however, incorporation of their abundances relative to natives into the RIP metric gave high predictive power. We present invader/native RIP biplots that provide an intuitive visualisation of comparisons among the invasive and native species, reflecting the known broad ecological impacts of the invaders. Thus, we provide a mechanistic understanding of invasive species impacts and a predictive tool for use by practitioners, for example, in risk assessments

La Chemise, mot donné. (Signé : A. Bugnot.)

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Patterns of the non-indigenous isopod Cirolana harfordi in Sydney Harbour.

Biological introductions can alter the ecology of local assemblages and are an important driver of global environmental change. The first step towards understanding the impact of a non-indigenous species is to study its distribution and associations in the invaded area. In Sydney Harbour, the non-indigenous isopod Cirolana harfordi has been reported in densities up to 0.5 individuals per cm(2) in mussel-beds. Abundances of this species have, however, been largely overlooked in other key habitats. The first aim of this study was to evaluate the abundances and distribution of C. harfordi across different habitats representative of Sydney Harbour. Results showed that C. harfordi occurred in oyster and mussel-beds, being particularly abundant in oyster-beds. We also aimed to determine the role of C. harfordi as a predator, scavenger and detritus feeder by investigating the relationships between densities of C. harfordi and (i) the structure of the resident assemblages, and (ii) deposited organic matter in oyster-beds. Densities of C. harfordi were not related to the structure of the assemblages, nor amounts of deposited organic matter. These findings suggested little or no ecological impacts of C. harfordi in oyster-beds. These relationships may, however, affect other variables such as growth of individuals, or be disguised by high variability of assemblages among different locations. Future studies should, therefore, test the impacts of C. harfordi on the size of organisms in the assemblage and use manipulative experiments to control for spatial variation. This study is the first published work on the ecology of the invasion of C. harfordi and provides the starting-point for the study of the impacts of this species in Sydney Harbour

Programmable logic controller (PLC) hardware training module

Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) makes automation easier to realize. Many of today\u27s industrial and manufacturing processes are being controlled by PLCs. Through this thesis project, the group helps students in De La Salle University to be familiarized and trained in the field of PLCs. The project composes of one main conveyor, two loading bays, three docking bays, three optical barriers, one color sensor, ten switches, one buzzer and three 7-Segment display. The training module is capable of stimulating a simple product line conveyor assembly found in manufacturing industry. The thesis project includes a user manual which contains tutorials about PLC fundamentals, instructions on operating the training module and experiments wherein PLC fundamentals are applied. The De Lorenzo PLC found in the De La Salle University\u27s electronics laboratory gets its input from the training module and process the inputs with the program stored in the PLC memory. The output components of the training module are activated by the De Lorenzo PLC. The hardware training module for PLC guides the students in their quest for further improving their skills and be more competitive in the field of automation

A novel framework for the use of remote sensing for monitoring catchments at continental scales

Historical ecology can teach us valuable lessons on the processes and drivers of environmental change that can inform future monitoring priorities and management strategies. Environmental data to study environmental history, however, is often absent or of low quality. Even when studying changes occurring during the last few decades, monitoring efforts are scarce due to logistical and cost limitations, leaving large areas unassessed. The aim of this study is to evaluate the use of estuarine water colour as an indicator of historical environmental change in catchments. Water colour change was assessed in estuaries in Australia from 1987 to 2015 using satellite remote sensing. Random points were selected for each estuary and applied to the Australian Geoscience Data Cube (based on Landsat images) to obtain reflectance data through time. We propose a framework where (i) water colour is used to detect historical changes in catchments using generalised additive models, (ii) possible stressors and pressures driving those changes are evaluated using other available historical data, and (iii) lessons learned inform appropriate monitoring and management actions. This framework represents a novel approach to generate historical data for large-scale assessments of environmental change at catchment level, even in poorly studied areas

Coastal greening of grey infrastructure: an update on the state-of-the-art

In the marine environment, greening of grey infrastructure (GGI) is a rapidly growing field that attempts to encourage native marine life to colonize marine artificial structures to enhance biodiversity, thereby promoting ecosystem functioning and hence service provision. By designing multifunctional sea defences, breakwaters, port complexes and off-shore renewable energy installations, these structures can yield myriad environmental benefits, in particular, addressing UN SDG 14: Life below water. Whilst GGI has shown great promise and there is a growing evidence base, there remain many criticisms and knowledge gaps, and some feel that there is scope for GGI to be abused by developers to facilitate harmful development. Given the surge of research in this field in recent years, it is timely to review the literature to provide an update update on the state-of-the-art of the field in relation to the many criticisms and identify remaining knowledge gaps. Despite the rapid and significant advances made in this field, there is currently a lack of science and practice outside of academic sectors in the developed world, and there is a collective need for schemes that encourage intersectoral and transsectoral research, knowledge exchange, and capacity building to optimize GGI in the pursuit of contributing to sustainable development

Building ‘blue’: An eco-engineering framework for foreshore developments

Urbanisation in terrestrial systems has driven architects, planners, ecologists and engineers to collaborate on the design and creation of more sustainable structures. Examples include the development of ‘green infrastructure’ and the introduction of wildlife corridors that mitigate urban stressors and provide positive ecological outcomes. In contrast, efforts to minimise the impacts of urban developments in marine environments have been far more restricted in their extent and scope, and have often overlooked the ecological role of the built environment as potential habitat. Urban foreshore developments, i.e. those built on the interface of intertidal and/or subtidal zones, have the potential to incorporate clear multi-functional outcomes, by supporting novel ecosystems. We present a step-by-step eco-engineering framework for ‘building blue’ that will allow coastal managers to facilitate planning and construction of sustainable foreshore developments. Adopting such an approach will incorporate ecological principles, thereby mitigating some of the environmental impacts, creating more resilient urban infrastructure and environments, and maximising benefits to the multiple stakeholders and users of marine urban waterfronts

DISTLM of the densities of <i>Cirolana harfordi</i> in oyster-beds, using Thickness of the habitat, Concentration of organic matter smaller than 64 µm (OM<64), Concentration of organic matter between 64 and 500 µm (OM 64–500) and Location as predictor variables. For marginal tests, variables are taken individually; for sequential tests, variables were chosen using Forward selection criteria. The column %var indicates the percentage of the variation explained by the predictor variables. Cum % is the cumulative percentage of variance explained.

<p>DISTLM of the densities of <i>Cirolana harfordi</i> in oyster-beds, using Thickness of the habitat, Concentration of organic matter smaller than 64 µm (OM<64), Concentration of organic matter between 64 and 500 µm (OM 64–500) and Location as predictor variables. For marginal tests, variables are taken individually; for sequential tests, variables were chosen using Forward selection criteria. The column %var indicates the percentage of the variation explained by the predictor variables. Cum % is the cumulative percentage of variance explained.</p

Functional and structural responses to marine urbanisation

Urban areas have broad ecological footprints with complex impacts on natural systems. In coastal areas, growing populations are advancing their urban footprint into the ocean through the construction of seawalls and other built infrastructure.While we have some understanding of how urbanisation might drive functional change in terrestrial ecosystems, coastal systems have been largely overlooked. This study is one of the first to directly assess how changes in diversity relate to changes in ecosystem properties and functions (e.g. productivity, filtration rates) of artificial and natural habitats in one of the largest urbanised estuaries in the world, Sydney Harbour. We complemented our surveys with an extensive literature search.We found large and important differences in the community structure and function between artificial and natural coastal habitats. However, differences in diversity and abundance of organisms do not necessarily match observed functional changes. The abundance and composition of important functional groups differed among habitats with rocky shores having 40% and 70% more grazers than seawalls or pilings, respectively. In contrast, scavengers were approximately 8 times more abundant on seawalls than on pilings or rocky shores and algae were more diverse on natural rocky shores and seawalls than on pilings. Our results confirm previous findings in the literature. Oysters were more abundant on pilings than on rocky shores, but were also smaller. Interestingly, these differences in oyster populations did not affect in situ filtration rates between habitats. Seawalls were the most invaded habitats while pilings supported greater secondary productivity than other habitats. This study highlights the complexity of the diversity-function relationship and responses to ocean sprawl in coastal systems. Importantly, we showed that functional properties should be considered independently from structural change if we are to design and manage artificial habitats in ways to maximise the services provided by urban coastal systems and minimise their ecological impacts