BES Facebook groupBritish Ecological Society Press Release
Tuesday 8 September 2009
Flower pots help recreate rock pools lost to coastal defences
The humble flower pot could provide new homes for sea creatures whose rock pool habitat has been lost because of building seawalls, ecologists will tell the British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting at the University of Hertfordshire this month.
Dr Mark Browne of the University of Sydney will explain how he worked with ecologists, engineers and local councils to develop and build special concrete flower pots to mimic lost rock pools.
Existing seawalls are largely bare, with around 35% of the artificial habitat covered by algae, sessile animals, limpets and snails. Six months after being attached to existing seawalls in Sydney Harbour, the flower pots more than trebled the number of species of algae, sessile and mobile animals living on the walls. This included novel species of seaweeds, grazing snails and limpets, crabs, amphipods, sponges, ascidians, isopods and worms.
Finding a cheap and effective replacement for vanishing rock pools is vital because seawalls have replaced so many natural shorelines and seawalls have huge ecological impacts.
According to Browne: “Around the world, seawalls are used to protect the soil on which commercial, residential and industrial infrastructures are built. However, building these walls has huge ecological impacts. The number of seawalls in coastal habitats is increasing due to growing populations of humans, rising sea levels and increases in the number and frequency of storms. In many parts of Australia, Asia, North America and Europe seawalls have replaced more than 50% of the natural coastline.”
“My research should have important applications in these places, potentially allowing environmental managers to increase the number and diversity of plants and animals that live on seawalls by adding flower pots to existing seawalls at minimal cost,” he says.
The next stage of Browne's work is to experiment with different mixtures of concrete to make the flower pots more durable and to find out how this affects the plants and animals living in them. Further work will also test whether or not important rare species can be transplanted into the flower pots to boost biodiversity even further.
Dr Mark Browne will present his full findings at 12:20 on Tuesday 8 September 2009 to the British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield.
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Notes for editors
1. For further information and photographs, please contact Dr Mark Browne, Centre for Research on Ecological Impacts of Coastal Cities, University of Sydney, tel: +44 (0)117 924 9176, email: mbrowne@eicc.bio.usyd.edu.au.
2. The British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting takes place from 8-10 September 2009 at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield. The meeting attracts hundreds of ecologists, making it Europe's largest ecological conference. Press passes and further information are available from Becky Allen, Press Officer, British Ecological Society, tel: +44 (0)1223 570016, mob: +44 (0)7949 804317, email: beckyallen@ntlworld.com.
3. A full programme for the meeting is available at www.britishecologicalsociety.org/meetings/current_future_meetings/2009_annual_meeting
4. The British Ecological Society is a learned society, a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. Established in 1913 by academics to promote and foster the study of ecology in its widest sense, the Society has 4,000 members in the UK and abroad. Further information is available at www.britishecologicalsociety.org.
5. Sea walls have major ecological impacts. They differ from natural rocky shores in important ways: they tend to be steep or vertical (which “compresses” the intertidal area to about 1 – 2 metres, compared with a natural, gently sloping foreshore, which covers 10s of metres); they have fewer cracks, crevices and overhangs compared with rock shores; and some habitats, such as rock pools, are missing altogether. Relatively little is known about how to make sea walls more environmentally friendly. As 2.7 billion people – more than 40% of the world's population – live in coastal cities, and climate change will result in rising sea levels, bridging this gap in knowledge is particularly important.
