Land-Ocean Connectivity - from Hydrological to Ecological Understanding of Groundwater Effects in the Coastal Zone

Conference outline

The coastal zone, where fresh and saltwater meet, hosts some of the most dynamic, diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. These ecosystems experience significant pressure from human activities, responding to direct and indirect human disturbance and to climatic-hydrologic variability. Hydrological land-ocean connectivity is an important driver of these ecosystems. It greatly affects coastal ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling, algal and zooplankton community dynamics, ecosystem metabolism or food web dynamics.

The critical role of surface water discharge from rivers to coastal ecosystems has been well documented. In the past decade or so, the hidden subsurface flow of coastal (intertidal and submarine) groundwater discharge and associated geochemical and hydrological processes have received an increasing amount of scientific attention. However, the effects of groundwater flow on productivity, composition, diversity and functioning of benthic and pelagic ecosystems along the world’s shorelines are not well understood.

This interdisciplinary conference will bring together physical scientists with expertise in various coastal groundwater studies (e.g., physicists, chemists, geologists, hydrologists) with coastal ecologists and environmental economists. The intention is to discuss the state of knowledge and to design future experiments that will help advance the understanding of hydrological-ecological connectivity in the coastal zone.

Scientific committee

Thomas Stieglitz (CNRS / IUEM, France, chair)
William C. Burnett (Florida State University, USA)
Makoto Taniguchi (Research Institute of Humanity and Nature, Japan)
Carlos Rocha (Trinity College, Ireland)
Thomas Stieglitz (CNRS / IUEM)
Severine Thomas (Europole Mer)
Nadine Reniers (Europole Mer)