Search

Highlights: [•] Beach management is often poorly adapted to beach settings and beach users. [•] Decision-making rarely considers users opinions, although it was highly encouraged. [•] We assess and compare users’ expectations of a natural beach and an urban beach. [•] Behind a seemingly homogeneity, there were significant differences between beaches. [•] A differential management is needed, stressing the awareness and education of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beaches are complex social-ecological systems that provide several goods and services improving human well being. Both an excessive development of the Tourism industry and an increase of coastal hazards have been identified as important factors inducing coastal degradation and affecting the natural supply of these services. Nevertheless, traditional beach management has been concentrated on geomorphic hazards and beaches recreational uses, overlooking their broader functions. Risk analysis is recognized as a tool to assist decision making, helping managers to prioritize issues and focus efforts in the activities with the greatest potential impact. However, as beach management, traditional risk management overlooks beach environmental values, focusing on damages to assets and not considering the total risk in management. In response to the need to incorporate integrated and proactive tools which assist coastal managers, we apply a beach multi-risk assessment in S'Abanell beach (Spanish Mediterranean), in order to prioritize the most risky hazards and the most affected ecosystem services, helping the manager to decide where to allocate resources to cope with hazards affecting beach's functionality. Seven coastal hazards and five ecosystem services have been characterized. River floods and Coastal storms were the riskiest hazards, while Recreation & Aesthetic was the most affected ecosystem service in S'Abanell beach. Risk valuation has been obtained based on hazards intensities and the ecosystem services economic valuation. The inclusion of these non-market values in the risk assessment improves risk analysis, and should help managers to make more accurate decisions in an integrated beach management process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Beach management has traditionally concentrated on recreational uses and geomorphologic processes, overlooking environmental values. Traditional risk analysis also overlooks environmental services focusing on socio-economic damages and only accounting for a part of the total risk. To overcome this situation, a systemic approach dealing with ecological and social dimensions is required. This paper proposes a risk analysis framework in which coastal hazards and beach ecosystem services are jointly considered. The first phase consists of the definition of the risk profile. This is done by building the beach Pathway of Effect, where links between coastal hazards and ecosystem services are identified following the DPSIR approach. The second phase, risk assessment, includes risk valuation and hazard prioritization, which will help managers to decide where to allocate resources to cope with hazards affecting beach functionality. The methodology was validated at S’Abanell beach (Spanish Mediterranean coast), which provides several ecosystem services and is subjected to a variety of hazards. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Understanding the relationships between beach morphodynamics and macrofauna assemblages has been critical in theoretical evolution of sandy beach ecology. However, macroscale studies that consider the concurrent effects of large-scale estuarine and morphodynamic gradients have been exceptional. The present study evaluates the combined effects of large-scale (>400km) salinity and morphodynamics on the distribution of Excirolana armata. Along a salinity gradient (from 0.10 to 34.30) generated by the Río de la Plata estuary (SW Atlantic Ocean), sixteen Uruguayan sandy beaches were analyzed over a two-year period. A conditional two-step procedure using a General Additive Model (2-step GAM) was performed in order to model occurrence (1st-step) and abundance (2nd-step) of E. armata, in relation to salinity, grain size, sand moisture, compaction and organic matter of the sand, slope, beach and swash width, and water and sediment temperature. The 1st-step GAM retained 6 physical descriptors in the model (decreasing order): mean grain size, organic matter, salinity, beach width, sand moisture and water temperature. The 2nd-step GAM showed that mean grain size, salinity, sand moisture, beach width, sand compaction and organic matter were the most important explanatory variables (in decreasing order) of abundance. Mean grain size was the main predictor in both models, suggesting an important substrate specificity of E. armata towards smallest grain sizes. A meta-analysis concerning large-scale variation in abundance of E. armata in sandy beaches of the Rio Grande ecoregion (28°S–35°S) of the Warm-Temperate Southwestern Atlantic Province gave compelling evidence of this high-substrate specificity of the E. armata. Salinity was also a key factor shaping patterns in occurrence and abundance, which increased from low to intermediate/high salinities (>20), reinforcing the notion of E. armata as a marine species with relatively high tolerance to estuarine conditions. The potential role that internal brooding gives for protection of offspring to osmotic stress is discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]