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Palombina Beach: Assessing Human Impact and Developing Sustainable Management

This forum will discuss the scientific approach to assessing the health of Palombina Beach and developing tools for its remediation. The beach faces conflicting uses and is affected by industrial, urban, and environmental pressures. The forum will focus on beach litter as an indicator of human impact and explore interventions for improving the beach ecosystem. The aim is to develop sustainable management strategies to enhance the socio-economic and environmental sustainability of Palombina Beach.

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Palombina Beach: Assessing Human Impact and Developing Sustainable Management

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  1. Adriatic Forum ICZM Expert Group Palombina beach The scientific approach Antonio Pusceddu Ancona (I) July 15 2006, Palombina beach

  2. Beaches are not deserts: they play a key role in coastal ecology To the casual observer, beaches may simply appear as barren stretches of sand - beautiful, but desert-like systems On the contrary, beaches are diverse and productive transitional ecosystems that serve as the critical link between marine and terrestrial environments. Sandy beaches provide habitats for hundreds of plant and animal species (most of which are insects and worms) Beaches support a rich trophic web of life in the adjacent submerged marine system, which includes worms, bivalves, and crustaceans

  3. For their boundary position, beaches represent the conveyor location integrating terrestrial and marine ecosystem services and as such they’re exploited for a variety of human activities COASTAL RECLAMATION TOURISM RENOURISHMENT ACCIDENTS AT SEA (OIL SPILLS) INDUSTRIAL, DOMESTIC AND AGRICULTURE WASTES ANTI-EROSION TOOLS

  4. Beaches and ICZM Beach and bathing-related recreational management is an important component of Integrated Coastal Zone Management. This is even exacerbated for those beaches located in urban coastal areas where the quality of the recreational resource is continuously threatened by the anthropogenic pressure But, we’re still searching for batteries of indicators for assessing the “health” of beach ecosystems and also exploring new tools for remediation

  5. The PALOMBINA Beach: a typical example of conflicting uses of the shorelines between industrial, urban and environmental services • Located between the port of Ancona and the API oil refinery • Compressed by two very stiff transport pathways (the SS.19 (Flaminia) and the national railway Bologna – Lecce) • Important recreational and bathing uses • Degeneration of water quality in summertime related to eutrophication • Therefore, we need integrated actions and tools for addressing these cross-cutting ecological and socio-economic issues

  6. Is the Palombina Beach human-affected? Evidences from a Beach Litter survey Beach litter’ is among the more evident indicators of human impact on the coastal marine environment

  7. Beach litter It includes: wood, glass, organic detritus, plastics, tissues Only a limited fraction is “natural”: the more abundant fractions is anthropogenic

  8. What about Palombina? • Sampling • Summer and Winter 2002 • 8 transects of 5 stations each • At each station “beach litter” (> 0.5 cm) collected from 1m2 squares (3 replicates per station) • Organic load (gravimetric) and meiofauna (sand worms)

  9. 50 40 30 -2 g m 20 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Summer Winter 30 25 20 -2 15 g m 10 5 0 Summer Winter Results Accumulation close to the API refinery No temporal variations

  10. Litter in Palombina • Relatively constant composition • Dominance of marine organic detritus • Increase of plastics in summer

  11. Litter: Spiaggia di Palombina • Biodegradable fraction is generally dominant • Increase if persistent materials in summer

  12. Hydrocarbons Total IPA Port API 9.0 8.0 7.0 6.0 -1 5.0 mg Kg 4.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 0.0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Transect Summer Winter • No statistical differences between transects • Increase of concentrations in winter

  13. Litter accumulation: the role of barriers A detritus fragment trespassing the barriers is less probably removed from waves The amount of litter remains more or less constant in summer, despite the cleaning operations This implies major inputs in summer and accumulation of non degradable litter Non degradable litter 25 20 -2 15 g m 10 5 0 Winter Summer

  14. Beach litter and ecological response Organic detritus and meiofauna 20 50 -2 40 15 30 -2 10 g m n ind 10 cm 20 5 10 0 0 Winter Summer Meiofauna The summer accumulation of organic detritus is associated with a collapse of sand living organisms as an effect of dystrophic crises

  15. Conclusions • Beach litter provides a syntehtic tool for assessing pressures and human impact levels of beaches • A seasonal sampling strategy but replicated at very short spatial scale is sufficient to detect patterns of change • The composition more than the quantity of litter provides elements for assessing the levels of putative impact

  16. What we need and aim to do • To develop new indicators, protocols and management tools able to improve socio-economic and environmental sustainability of the Palombina beach; • To provide new scientific elements on actions of intervention for the quality assessment, the protection and the recovery of the beach ecosystem; • To identify ecologically sustainable biotechnological solutions for improving beach utilization

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