STRUCTURES FOR WAVE ENERGY ABSORPTION AND COLONIZATION OF MANGROVES
The research will test geosynthetic landscape systems to support human development in tropical regions simultaneous to critical mangrove biological processes. The interconnected structural networks are intended to facilitate ecosystem recovery, dissipate catastrophic storm impact, mitigate erosion and enable large-scale building development to co-exist with restorative mangrove-type vegetation.
Describe the critical need your solution addresses.
Mangroves are being lost at a rate that exceeds the rainforests, forecasting a severe decline in biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. By losing protective vegetation, shoreline communities and conventional civil coastline structures are progressively exposed to damage and catastrophic failure from increasingly extreme weather conditions and sea level rise.
Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.
We are developing computation that integrates interdisciplinary procedures into parametric models which will provide critical inter-scalar information on the dynamic behavior of mangrove landscapes for the design of new systems for coastline structures. The structures would engage environmental questions and requirements that span large ranges of physical and temporal scales, questions that have been disregarded in the development of conventional coastline structures, due to the previous inability to process the complex ecological and environmental performance parameters attendant to such landscapes.
At the present, we are investigating composite structural systems that emulate mangrove environments through incorporating compliant characteristics into human programmatic requirements. Our landscape simulations have resulted in a series of design criteria that are being used to develop next generation coastline structures. The ultimate goal is to capitalize on the complementary structural capabilities of engineered structures with compliant characteristics of mangrove networks, to ensure value and security of these coastline habitats. The long-term scientific goal is development of methods to predict the response of ecosystems to a series of interdependent structural systems that simultaneously support sustainable urban scale development along with flourishing indigenous flora and fauna, while dissipating dangers from extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?
Environmental Systems
Coastal environments are complex and integrated systems and require an intervention equally as such. Mangrove forests along tropical coastlines are essential to land and marine ecosystems and biodiversity linked to a network of ecological criteria. Mangrove detritus production is about 1 kg litter/m2 annually, with a portion of that exported with the tide, forming the understructure to a food web that extends into other ecosystems such as coral reef and sea grass. (UNEP-WCMC, 2006) These forests are responsible for the filtration of agricultural and urban runoff and provide a primary fish habitat essential to healthy populations of ocean fish stock. The intricate matrix of mangrove root and branch structures dissipates wave energy through drag force (Massel et al., 1998) and inhibits erosion as a result of sediment trapping in the ecosystem’s complex water currents. (Furukawa 1996)
Human Systems
Mangroves exhibit non-catastrophic failure when subjected to extreme weather events as a result of their interconnected root and branch systems, and the physiology and underlying processes that support this behavior have direct applications within coastal urban development. Coastal development utilizing the natural sedimentation patterns of mangrove forests may retain the integrity of native ecologies, both land and marine-based, while addressing increasing pressures to build out coastlines within geopolitically-limited areas. The protective buffer afforded by coastal vegetation may lend to financial relief and long-term viability of coastal urban regions. Coastal communities that operate mostly within local economies rely on the resources associated with mangrove ecosystems without contingency plan for additional sustenance. Although the context for this research is the performance of ‘built ecologies’ along tropical coastlines, the research has wider implications for any interdisciplinary framework whereby the urgent shift towards addressing mechanistic and large-scale practical environmental challenges has necessitated the simplification of complex models in the transfer of information across scales.
