A hierarchical approach to the examination of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem service flows across coastal margins.

英国海岸线的健康与我们作为一个岛国的成功密不可分，并通过我们的经济、娱乐和文化产生共鸣。最紧迫的是，在英国众多多样的景观中，其沿海系统是对气候变化最敏感的。随着气温升高，海平面将上升，海陆交汇处的力量将变得更具破坏性。盐沼、泥滩、海滩和岩石海岸都将受到影响，但在这些地区中，最敏感的是泥滩和盐沼，它们是海岸系统的共同特征，占英国河口总面积的一半多一点。这些景观不仅支持着大量具有经济价值的动植物物种，它们还充当着碳储存、养分循环、污染物捕获和破坏的场所。因此，保护它们是至关重要的，需要积极和明智的管理，为子孙后代保存它们。自然环境研究委员会呼吁帮助理解这些系统提供的功能（生态系统服务流）和帮助提供这些服务的生物（生物多样性储量）之间的景观尺度联系，这为超越该领域以前的大多数工作提供了重要机会，这些工作都是在小型或实验室规模上进行的。虽然具有基础科学重要性，但实验室研究的影响可能难以转化为政策，沿海管理者需要更明确的证据基础来了解生态系统服务流如何在更大的空间尺度上运作，例如整个盐沼或潮间带和盐沼区域。我们提出的项目“一种等级方法来检查生物多样性和沿海边缘生态系统服务流动之间的关系”（cess）将提供这样一个大规模的理解。我们的英国专家联盟从微生物生态学家到环境经济学家，再到数学建模师，包括BTO和RSPB这样的组织，他们对沿海湿地的可持续利用有着直接和既得利益。cess将共同开展一项跨越景观尺度的研究，调查生物多样性储备如何提供以下生态系统服务（参见国家生态系统评估）。-支助服务：营养循环、健康生境-供应服务；从景观中获得的商品-调节服务：海岸保护，气候调节（温室气体交换，碳封存）-文化服务：娱乐（散步，划独木舟，垂钓，观鸟，狩猎和美容）cess将结合对两个区域景观的详细研究与大规模的英国范围内的研究，以便得出具体和一般的结论。区域研究将比较两个对地方和国家都很重要的地区：西海岸的莫克姆湾和东海岸的埃塞克斯海岸线。我们将在600多个站点开展生物和物理调查，并利用这些调查结果阐明生物多样性如何提供这些重要的生态系统功能。这些信息将与那些对使用和管理海岸系统感兴趣的人分享，经过我们的分析；我们将为英国沿海湿地的未来分析、管理和可持续性提出实用的方法和改进的工具。

CBESS Summary:The health of the UK's coastlines is inextricably linked to our success as an island nation, and resonates through our economy, our recreation, and our culture. Most pressingly, of all the UK's many and varied landscapes, its coastal systems are the ones most immediately sensitive to climate change. As temperatures increase, sea levels will rise and the forces experienced where land and sea meet will become more destructive. Salt marshes, mudflats, beaches and rocky shores will all be affected but, of these areas, the most sensitive are the mudflats and salt marshes that are common features of coastal systems, and which comprise just over half of the UK's total estuarine area. Not only do these landscapes support a wide range of economically valuable animal and plant species, they also act as sites of carbon storage, nutrient recycling, and pollutant capture and destruction. Their preservation is, therefore, of the utmost importance, requiring active and informed management to save them for future generations. The Natural Environment Research Council's call to help understand the landscape-scale links between the functions that these systems provide (ecosystem service flows) and the organisms that help provide these services (biodiversity stocks) offers an important opportunity to move beyond most previous work in this field, which has been conducted at small or laboratory scales. While of foundational scientific importance, the implications of laboratory studies can be hard to translate into policy, and coastal managers require a clearer evidence base to understand how ecosystem service flows operate at much larger spatial scales, e.g. entire salt marshes or regions of intertidal flat and salt marshes. The programme we are proposing 'A hierarchical approach to the examination of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem service flows across coastal margins' (CBESS) will provide such a large scale understanding. Our consortium of UK experts ranges from microbial ecologists, through environmental economists, to mathematical modellers, including organisations like the BTO and the RSPB, who have immediate and vested interest in the sustainable use of coastal wetlands.Together, CBESS will create a study that spans the landscape scale, investigating how biodiversity stocks provide the following ecosystem services (cf. National Ecosystem Assessment).- Supporting' services: nutrient cycling, healthy habitat - Provisioning services; goods obtained from the landscape- Regulating' services: coastal protection, climate regulation (greenhouse gas exchange, carbon sequestration)- Cultural services: Recreation (walking, canoeing, angling, birding, hunting and beauty)CBESS will combine the detailed study of two regional landscapes with a broad-scale UK-wide study to allow both specific and general conclusions to be drawn. The Regional study will compare two areas of great local and national importance: Morecambe Bay on the west coast and the Essex coastline on the east coast. We will carry out biological and physical surveys at more than 600 stations and use these results to clarify how biodiversity can provide these important ecosystem functions. This information will be shared with those interested in using and managing coastal systems and, after our analysis; we will propose practical methods and improved tools for the future analysis, management, and sustainability of the UK's coastal wetlands.