Abstract
As accumulation zones, sandy beaches are temporal sinks for beach wrack and litter, both often seen as nuisances to tourists. Consequently, there is a need for beach management and an enhanced political interest to evaluate their ecosystem services. We applied a new online multidisciplinary assessment approach differentiating between the provision, potential, and flow at German and Lithuanian beaches (Southern Baltic Sea). We selected a set of services and assessed four beach scenarios developed accordingly to common management measures (different beach wrack and litter accumulations). We conducted comparative assessments involving 39 external experts using spread-sheets and workshops, an online survey as well as a combined data-based approach. Results indicated the relative importance of cultural (52.2%), regulating and maintenance (37.4%), and provisioning services (10.4%). Assessed impact scores showed that the removal of beach wrack is not favorable with regard to the overall ecosystem service provision. Contrarily, the removal of litter can increase the service flow significantly. When removing beach wrack, synergies between services should be used, i.e., use of biomass as material or further processing. However, trade-offs prevail between cultural services and the overall provision of beach ecosystem services (i.e., coastal protection and biodiversity). We recommend developing new and innovative beach cleaning techniques and procedures, i.e., different spatio-temporal patterns, e.g., mechanical vs. manually, daily vs. on-demand, whole beach width vs. patches. Our fast and easy-to-apply assessment approach can support decision-making processes within sustainable coastal management allowing us to show and compare the impacts of measures from a holistic ecosystem services perspective.
Highlights
Increasing human activities on beaches and developments in the surrounding area have led to the endangerment and often destruction of the typical flora and fauna in recent decades and even centuries (Davenport and Davenport 2006)
This paper has argued that the removal of beach wrack at Baltic sandy beaches is not favorable with regard to the overall ecosystem service provision, as it has a strong positive impact on both service potential and flow
Synergies can be found in the cleaning of beaches heavily used for tourism by removing beach wrack for further processing or use
Summary
Increasing human activities on beaches and developments in the surrounding area have led to the endangerment and often destruction of the typical flora and fauna in recent decades and even centuries (Davenport and Davenport 2006). Baltic coasts, especially sandy shores, are mainly related to Environmental Management tourism and recreation and face several human pressures. While beach tourism increased Baltic-wide by 10.4% or 88 million tourist arrivals between 2014 and 2016 (BSTC 2018), large sections of the Baltic coasts account for an annual coastal erosion of 0.2–0.3 m/year on average with the highest loss rates up to 1.5 m/year (Jensen and Schwartzer 2013). Increasing policy relevance and demand for nature protection areas (e.g., Natura 2000), as well as a tourism-driven requirement for beach cleaning, lead to trade-offs between nature conservation and tourism interests. Spatial conflicts and trade-offs call for consensus-building and decision-making, and for coastal management that more holistically integrates human and environmental interests
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