Coastal research

Background

Coastal seas not only connect land and oceans, but as multi-layered transition zones they are global components of the Earth system with diverse habitats and rich resources. For this reason, people have chosen coastal areas as their preferred settlement area for thousands of years, despite their risks, and from here they make use of the great opportunities that oceans offer people.

It is certain that the extent of this use will increase considerably and that the pressure on the marine environment will also increase due to new forms of use. At the same time, anthropogenically influenced climate change appears to be manifesting itself more strongly, with diverse consequences and major risks in coastal areas and shallow seas.

In addition to gaining knowledge, coastal marine research is therefore increasingly striving to generate and provide data and information that create a scientifically sound understanding of change in coastal seas and enable realistic assessments of development opportunities and potential threats from human activities.

Focal points of the strategy group

• Outlines the development trends on German coasts
• Networks existing and planned research activities in this area
• Formulates future research needs

Cooperation with the KÜNO programme

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research has been funding the "Coastal Research North Sea - Baltic Sea (KüNO)" network since 2013. During the first phase of the KÜNO network, the KDM Strategy Group initiated a consultation process on research needs in coastal marine research in 2015, which resulted in the Altona Declaration (download here), in which joint priority national and international research and development goals were defined for the coming decades. This approach was taken up by the BMBF with the framework programme "MARE:N - Coastal, Marine and Polar Research for Sustainability". In the second phase of the KüNO network, current research needs were concretised with stakeholders in coastal marine research in the North and Baltic Seas as part of the "Coast in Transition" symposium (to the result here). The formulated research needs formed the basis for KüNO III and its seven research networks, which have been funded by the BMBF since November 2020 as part of the MARE:N research programme. MARE:N is part of the BMBF's Research for Sustainability Strategy (FONA³).

Due to the close connection to KÜNO, the work of the strategy group is currently suspended.