SECOS

My PhD research is embedded in the BMBF-Project SECOS (The service of sediments in German coastal seas): Coastal and marginal seas serve as natural reaction sites for the processing and accumulation of land-derived discharges. The main location of modification and accumulation of input into coastal and marginal seas are in most cases the sediments. Their key positions as central reactors in land-sea interaction is insufficiently studied and assessed. In the frame of the proposed study, distribution and quantitative relevance of sedimentary services in the range of the German Baltic waters shall be mapped and modelled including projection of future scenarios with the aim to advance the development of management tools. This will be primarily realized by the functional assessment of those main sedimentary areas that are most relevant contributors to desired feedbacks to the environment and the society, and by a typology derived from these services. For key areas, key services and the entire outer coastal range of the German Baltic, an approach for the monetary assessment of the relevant ecosystem services will be designed and included in habitat maps. The project regionally complements an approach coordinated by Rostock University that studies the inner waters and the direct fringe of the Baltic coastline, and the project proposal NOAH (coordinated by HZG), which, for the North Sea, also applies the approach of geo-referenced functional mapping.

My part in the project is to assess the effect of hydrodynamic properties on the sediment surface,e.g. the influence on waves on resuspension, pathways of suspended sediment determined by currents, erosion and deposition sites. Observations from ship cruises are therefore combined with numerical models of the Baltic Sea and idealized process studies.