article · Nature Reviews Biodiversity
Coastal wetlands such as tidal marshes, mangrove forests, and tidal flats sustain the livelihoods of millions of people globally. Human activities, including habitat conversion, pollution, fishing, and climate change, have reduced both the extent and the ecological quality of these environments across local, regional, and global scales over decades and centuries. The resilience of these ecosystems relies directly on their quality, which is determined by physical factors such as sediment supply as well as ecological species interactions across multiple geographic scales. Current protection and restoration initiatives tend to remain localised and predominantly focus on ecosystem area rather than condition. Sustaining coastal wetlands into the future requires an improved understanding of ecosystem resilience alongside co-ordinated conservation strategies that actively expand habitat extent and improve environmental quality across all scales.
Millions of people rely directly on coastal wetlands for their livelihoods, yet human pressures continuously threaten these habitats. Conventional conservation frequently focuses on localised restoration of surface area. Understanding how environmental quality and physical factors govern resilience across larger scales helps communities, coastal planners, and policymakers design far more effective long-term conservation programmes.
The abstract does not indicate a commercialisation pathway or direct product development, focusing instead on synthesising principles to guide conservation policy. Environmental planners, conservation organisations, and coastal management authorities could apply these insights to improve large-scale habitat restoration programmes, but the work represents early-stage, conceptual guidance rather than an applied commercial technology.
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Coastal wetlands, including tidal marshes, mangrove forests and tidal flats, support the livelihoods of millions of people. Understanding the resilience of coastal wetlands to the increasing number and intensity of anthropogenic threats (such as habitat conversion, pollution, fishing and climate change) can inform what conservation actions will be effective. In this Review, we synthesize anthropogenic threats to coastal wetlands and their resilience through the lens of scale. Over decades and centuries, anthropogenic threats have unfolded across local, regional and global scales, reducing both the extent and quality of coastal wetlands. The resilience of existing coastal wetlands is driven by their quality, which is modulated by both physical conditions (such as sediment supply) and ecological conditions (such as species interactions operating from local through to global scales). Protection and restoration efforts, however, are often localized and focus on the extent of coastal wetlands. The future of coastal wetlands will depend on an improved understanding of their resilience, and on society’s actions to enhance both their extent and quality across different scales. Coastal wetlands are important ecosystems around the world and are under increasing anthropogenic threat. This Review explores the threats to coastal wetlands across multiple scales, the drivers of their resilience to change and future conservation priorities.
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DOI: 10.1038/s44358-024-00004-x
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