Publicaties

Better integration of knowledge from ecological, social and economic science is necessary to advance the understanding and modelling of soci-ecological systems. To model ecosystem integrity (EI) and ecosystem services (ES) at the landscape scale, assessment matrices are commonly used.

The necessity of using integrative system approaches to understand and solve environmental problems has become obvious in the last decades. The development of knowledge for Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) requires identification of the components, both natural and human, of the ecosystem, and understanding their relationships to manage them in an integrated context.

Here we present the first digital, publicly available, ecotope map of the trilateral Wadden Sea covering the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. This ecotope map, representative for the time period 2008–2012, was developed on the basis of bathymetry, salinity, flow velocity, exposure time, sediment composition, hard substrates and salt marshes. Ecotopes are discrete classes of the physical environment based on the distributions of communities in an ecosystem. An ecotope map can give a first–order estimate of the potential spatial distribution of species and communities.

We investigated the variability in photosynthetic parameters during a number of 13h tidal cycles at different stations and during different times of the phytoplankton bloom dynamics in the Dutch Western Wadden Sea (Marsdiep basin).

The vertical tide in the Wadden Sea causes alternate flooding and drying of the intertidal flats, the duration of which is affected by wind surges, secondarily. To estimate, for instance, the potential growth of microphytobenthos and foraging time of suspension-feeding bivalves and benthos-feeding waders, it is important to have spatio-temporal data of these exposure times. In this study, we have compared two methods to determine the exposure times of tidal flats in the Dutch Wadden Sea.

Protected areas (PAs), often very valuable but also vulnerable, are the cornerstones of global and European conservation efforts. Some PAs are mainly protected for biodiversity reasons other for a diverse set of reasons such as high recreational or landscape value. Whether there is a balance between protection and appreciation of different PAs is the main question we want to address in this article.

The most legally binding nature protection policy in the Netherlands and the EU (Natura 2000) designates sites based on ecological value, ensuring their sustained protection. Of less concern to this policy are the current and future nature-based needs of the public, who is experiencing increases in education, income and health.

The effect of grid-spacing on the quality of species abundance maps is explored for species that show zero-inflation and spatial auto- correlation.

The objective of the study was to provide a general procedure for mapping species abundance when data are zero-inflated and spatially correlated counts. The bivalve species Macoma balthica was observed on a 500×500 m grid in the Dutch part of the Wadden Sea.

In the last decade the topic of governance has emerged in the protected area debate. A cornerstone was the 2003 IUCN World congress in Durban. There and in further discussions it was approved that knowledge about who to involve in is essential. This has also become very significant in the Wadden Sea area, which is a unique trilateral area, not only in terms of its high nature value, but also because of its diverse functions, structures and constitutions.