Ecosystem-functioning approaches for assessing and managing ecosystem services = Methodes voor evaluatie en beheer van ecosysteemdiensten op basis van ecosysteemfunctioneren

Ecosystem services are a general term for all the benefits that nature provides to humans. These include food, clean drinking water, control of greenhouse gasses, protection against floods as well as potential for recreation, a sense of well-being, … . The concept has emerged in response to the unabated loss of biodiversity and as a tool to increase support for nature and biodiversity conservation. Originally it had a main purpose of awareness raising and the most commonly used approach to assess them was to attach a value – often monetary – to land use types for their capacity to deliver certain ecosystem services. With increasing interest to include ecosystem services in spatial planning and using it to support decision-making, criticism started to grow on the lack of ecological underpinning of land-use based indicators. Because of the wide array of disciplines that the concept of ecosystem services covers, developing scientifically rigorous yet user-friendly and transparent methodologies poses a huge challenge. The main aim of this research is to develop practical methodologies to improve the consideration of ecosystem functioning in ecosystem services assessments and thus advance the implementation of ecosystem services in practice

CLIMAR. Section report 3: adaptation measures to climate change impacts along the Belgian coastline

This is the third section report written by Flanders Hydraulics Research in the framework of the BELSPO project CLIMAR. The report is part of work package 3 of the case-study coastal flooding, in which alternative adaptation measures to the increasing risks of coastal flooding as a consequence of climate change are identified. The research is based on international literature and on the outcomes of an interactive workshop with stakeholders from different coastal sectors, organized in the scope of work package 3 of CLIMAR. First, an overview is given of all the feasible structural and non-structural adaptation measures which where found in literature or proposed during the workshop. Second, this variety of solutions is projected onto the Belgian coastline. A more detailed evaluation of the proposed scenario’s will be carried out in the next work package of the project

Assessing climate change impacts on flooding risks in the Belgian coastal zone

Within the scope of the Belgian project CLIMAR an attempt is made to develop an evaluation framework for adaptation scenario’s as a response to the climate change induced impacts in the North Sea area. Primary effects are direct consequences of climate change such as sea level rise, erosion, changes in temperature and precipitation and increased storminess. Secondary impacts are direct and indirect results of the primary effects on different sectors. A first phase of the project consists of identifying and scoping the secondary impacts on ecological and social-economic activities. In this paper results will be presented regarding the secondary impacts of flooding only.Climate change induced primary effects such as sea level rise and increased storminess lead to higher risks of flooding of low-lying coastal areas. One of the most significant social secondary effects is the number of people at risk due to flooding. An important economical effect of climate change is the amount of damage costs. Besides direct damages there will also be indirect economic results such as temporary suspension of production and loss of jobs. Other ecological effects of increased flooding risks are the loss of beach and dune area, as well as associated specific habitats such as wetlands. Indirectly this leads to loss of biodiversity.The magnitude of the most significant secondary effects is quantified by carrying out risk calculations. For each of the sets of the changing physical parameters a related storm scenario is statistically determined. In a first approach, the flooding risks during an extreme storm under present climate conditions and sea level rise are estimated. By means of a set of numerical models the areas susceptible to flooding in the Belgian coastal plain are identified. The resulting flooding risk maps are then used to estimate the scope of the secondary impacts

CLIMAR: evaluation of climate change impacts and adaptation responses for marine activities. Subdocument coastal flooding

Within the project CLIMAR an attempt is made to develop an evaluation framework for adaptation responses toclimate change induced impacts within the North Sea environment. The identification and quantification of all thepossible secondary impacts of climate change is handled on a sectoral level. The different case-studiesinvestigated in the framework of the research are fishery, tourism, sand and gravel extraction, the port ofZeebrugge and flood risks. This document gives an overview of all the different types of land occupation andinfrastructure within the coastal zone that might be subject to flood risks as a consequence of primary climatechange impacts

Microstructural development and mechanical properties of iron based cermets processed by pressureless and spark plasma sintering

Iron-based cermets are an interesting class of metal-ceramic composites in which properties and the factors influencing them are to be explored. In this work the metal matrix contains Cr, W, Mo and V as alloying elements, and the hard phase is constituted by 50 vol% of titanium carbonitride (TiCN) particles. The work studies the influence of the C content and the processing method on the sinterability, microstructure and hardness of the developed cermet materials. For that purpose, cermet samples with different C content in the matrix (0 wt%, 0.25 wt%, 0.5 wt%, 1.0 wt%) were prepared by conventional pressureless sintering (CPS) and, in order to achieve finer microstructures and to reduce the sintering time, by spark plasma sintering (SPS). The density and hardness (HV30) of the processed materials was evaluated, while their phase composition and microstructure was characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The equilibrium phase diagram of the composite material was calculated by ThermoCalc software in order to elucidate the influence of the carbon content on the obtained phases and developed microstructures.The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the R&D Project MAT2009-14448-C02 and the Comunidad de Madrid through the program ESTRUMAT-CM (reference S2009/MAT- 1585). K. Vanmeensel thanks the Research Fund Flanders (FWO) for his postdoctoral fellowship.Publicad

Assessing the storm vulnerability of the Belgian coastline

Climate change is likely to induce increased sea level and storm frequency. As such, assessing the strength of the Belgian coastal defence infrastructure against natural hazards is of primordial importance to reduce inundation consequences to properties and nature. This study presents an integrated methodology to estimate damage risks from a hypothetical storm with a surge level of +8m TAW and a duration of 45 hours along the entire coastline. After translation of deep water hydrometeorological conditions to the nearshore, several failure modes of the defence infrastructure are modelled: beach and dune erasion, collapse of dikes due to wave impact and overtopping, and subsequent breach forming and flooding of the low-lying coastal plain. Attention was paid to the various model uncertainties. Damage of infrastructure, properties and human casualties are calculated using a raster-based GIS model. Multiplication of the results with a rate factor based on prognoses of the evolution of socio-economic parameters allows projection of the results to 2050. All this, in combination with a social cost benefit analysis, will provide a tool for supporting coastal zone management in Belgium in a quantitative way