Changes in biodiversity in European coastal sand dunes established in front of dune dykes

The Horizon Europe research project DuneFront will demonstrate blue-grey coastal and marine infrastructure as a new generation of sustainable, inclusive, and aesthetic solution to ensure coastal safety under climate change. The project has the ambition to co-create hybrid Dune-Dike Nature Based Solutions (DD-hybrid NbS) that can efficiently integrate static hard infrastructure with adaptive, dynamic aeolian and vegetated sediments. Mainstreaming biodiversity into marine and coastal DD-hybrid NbS is essential to jointly safeguard human assets, blue economy activities and biodiversity gain and restoration. DuneFront will achieve this challenge by identifying key biological, physical, and socio-economic boundary conditions, and by translating evidence on biodiversity, morphodynamics and safety from 12 Demonstrators along vulnerable European coasts into new roadmaps for DD-hybrid NbS design and installation. The integration of this multidisciplinary knowledge into physical and digital twins will pilot the development of a Decision-Support-System, coastal and marine infrastructure Blueprints, and the installation of new prototypes along one of the most recreated coasts. The DuneFront consortium brings together 16 partners (10 universities, 3 research organisations, 2 large enterprises and a government agency) from 6 different European countries in a co-creation scenario. The project is coordinated by the Terrestrial Ecology (Fac. Sciences) and Coastal Engineering (Fac. Engineering and Architecture) from UGent.
DuneFront aims to demonstrate the importance of Dune-Dike Nature Based Solutions for the restoration of local and regional biodiversity, e.g., through the effective design of nature and the restoration of connectivity. The PhD student will study the patterns of plant diversity, its functioning with respect to dune development and erosion control in the series of demonstrators along the coasts of Portugal, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. While the focus is predominantly on vegetation ecology, also patterns in arthropod and soil diversity can be studied.
Tasks involve:
– reconstruction of vegetation development based on remote sensing data
– plant (and other biodiversity) surveys along beach-dune transects
– establishing plant-plant and/or plant-sediment interaction experiments
– trait quantification
The candidate should have a master degree (5 years of university) in Ecology or Environmental Science and an experience in field experiments, trait-based approaches in ecology, plant or animal taxonomy, uni- and multi-variate statistical analyses and high level in English speaking and writing.
Contact : richard.michalet@u-bordeaux.fr, Dries.Bonte@UGent.be