Ecological Consequences of Shoreline Hardening: A Meta-Analysis.

ABSTRACT: Protecting coastal communities has become increasingly important as their populations grow, resulting in increased demand for engineered shore protection and hardening of over 50% of many urban shorelines. Shoreline hardening is recognized to reduce ecosystem services that coastal populations rely on, but the amount of hardened coastline continues to grow in many ecologically important coastal regions. Therefore, to inform future management decisions, we conducted a meta-analysis of studies comparing the ecosystem services of biodiversity (richness or diversity) and habitat provisioning (organism abundance) along shorelines with versus without engineered-shore structures. Seawalls supported 23% lower biodiversity and 45% fewer organisms than natural shorelines. In contrast, biodiversity an

SUBMITTER: Gittman RK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5421310 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature