Beaches―What Future? An integrated approach to the ecology of sand beaches

摘要

Sandy beaches are the functional links between sea and land, where the transfer of nutrients is processed in both directions. Sandy beaches present common features worldwide, which make them interesting for comparative and ecological research. But they also share common problems of human impacts due to their economic relevance and the fragility of their ecosystems. Tourism, fishery, urbanisation, ports are challenging beaches both in the southern and northern Hemispheres in developing and developed countries. The limits between land and sea will always exist, whatever management measures will be adopted, but will ecosystems maintain their functionality? Sustainable management of sandy beaches is becoming more and more an issue in most countries. Common management strategies of these key environments should be developed, integrating different experiences and know-how, in order to assure the future of sand beach ecosystems. A need for unifying the efforts of baseline research on the ecology of sandy beaches and for transferring the results to coastal managers and policy makers, often unaware of the role of life in sand beaches, has been realised. Researchers and students of sandy beaches thus co-operated in several common projects, developing a 'sandy beach' network, particularly in the southern Hemisphere, while for European and Mediterranean coasts only a few case-studies had been performed.