N.V. Shadrin

Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, Sevastopol, Ukraine
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Marine Science, 2013, Vol. 3, No. 43   doi: 10.5376/ijms.2013.03.0043
Received: 25 Jun., 2013    Accepted: 16 Sep., 2013    Published: 23 Sep., 2013

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Shadrin, 2013, Coupling of Shoreline Erosion and Biodiversity Loss: Examples from the Black Sea, International Journal of Marine Science, Vol.3, No.43 352-360 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2013.03.0043)

The shoreline zone is an area where the sea and land contact and plays a very important role in integrating a sea and its watershed in a whole system. Among the main environmental problems of the coastal zones, two critical ones are - coastal erosion and a biodiversity loss. Problems are most pronounced in semi-enclosed seas as the Black sea. Using results of the long-term studies in different parts of the Black Sea shoreline this paper attempts to make some steps to deepen our understanding of interactions between biodiversity loss and shoreline erosion. An analysis of the results from several case studies was done. Some mechanisms of interrelations between coastal erosion and biodiversity changes are also discussed. The increased concentration of mineral particles, especially hydrophilic ones, as a result of coastal erosion, is a threat not only to benthic organisms, but also to planktonic microalgae and copepods. This negative impact sharply decreases total productivity of coastal waters. De-vegetation of the beaches and cliffs increases movement of sand and soil particles from beaches and cliffs due to high acceleration of wind and water erosion. This also leads to an increased turbidity of marine waters and an associated decrease in their productivity. Other results suggest there is a decrease in mollusk shell production leading to acceleration of a beach degradation which may also increase cliff abrasion. Coastal de-vegetation, marine community degradation and coastline erosion interrelate through a network of chains of cause-and-effect that forms the positive feed-forward and feed-back loops. This creates a self-acceleration mechanism of a development of coastal erosion and biodiversity loss.

Shoreline erosion; De-vegetation; Mussels; Seaweeds; Sea grasses