“Using the wave flume facilities at CORL, we verified the reef’s performance under extreme wave conditions relevant to coastal protection and examined how that performance changed as oysters colonized the structure over time,” Mr. Geldard said.
“Designing these systems requires an interdisciplinary approach that integrates ecology, biology and coastal engineering to understand both ecological performance and impacts on waves, currents and sediment transport.”
Researchers used the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Reefense program as a case study to show how interdisciplinary teams could address three core design priorities: shoreline protection, structural durability and cost-effectiveness.
Check out the open access paper…
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2516197123
Global efforts to restore oyster reefs and their services are accelerating (9). While many oyster reef restoration projects are primarily intended for habitat recovery or enhancing fisheries or water quality, an increasing number aim to provide coastal protection known as “living shorelines” (10). Living shorelines are one example of a nature-based solution, defined as actions that use natural processes and ecosystems to address societal challenges while delivering cobenefits for people and nature (11).
Oyster reef living shorelines often involve the placement of a fringing or breakwater reef substrate that is either naturally colonized by oysters or seeded with hatchery-reared spat in recruitment-limited systems (12). The capacity of oysters to adapt to climate-driven changes, such as sea level rise, is one benefit of living shorelines compared with conventional engineered coastal protection structures (13).
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The integration of ecology and engineering in methods for coastal hazard management represents a paradigm shift in a field that has traditionally been delivered by engineers designing fixed structures, such as seawalls and breakwaters or, in more recent decades, by ecologists seeking to restore or rehabilitate biogenic habitats.
Indeed, there is evidence that living shoreline design and implementation are still occurring in a mostly siloed approach among disciplines, which has resulted in oyster reef living shorelines achieving either engineering or ecological goals, but not both (12, 16). Effective interdisciplinary collaboration is required to provide the technical guidance currently lacking for oyster reef living shorelines. Without this technical guidance, oyster reef living shorelines are generally not implemented at scale due to perceived risk or delivered by end users through a trial-and-error approach with higher likelihood of failure (17).