NordSalt

NordSalt: Climate Change Impacts and Biodiversity Interactions in Nordic Salt Marshes
NordSalt will increase public awareness of the ecological role and importance of Nordic salt marsh habitats for climate mitigation, biodiversity maintenance and coastal protection.

1) Multiactor labs (MAL) will be used to engage stakeholders to co-produce knowledge and understanding of Nordic salt marsh ecosystem services.
2) Policy briefs based on NordSalt’s main findings and recommendation will be prepared for the Nordic Minister Council and national agencies.
3) project results will also be presented to the Commission and in international policy fora.

The project will fuse data coming from multiple sources such as drone, air photo & satellite footage, existing databases and maps using GIS tools to establish a comprehensive inventory of Nordic salt marsh habitats. This will provide basis for an assessment of habitat classification types (EU, Nordic, national), spatial status, dominant plant community and present and future management options for Nordic salt marshes, including maps of salt marsh areas current status. We will also assess environmental and anthropogenic pressures impacting these marsh habitats in different areas of the Nordic region. NordSalt will measure BC stocks and sequestration rates in salt marshes with grazed and ungrazed marsh plant communities at case study sites. Methane emissions and net CO2 fluxes will also be measured along different coastal gradients. We will quantitively link plant biodiversity and plant community composition to carbon stocks, BC sequestration and GHG emissions using field surveys along the Baltic Sea gradient. We will also experimentally test how plant functional diversity, fundamentally altered by grazing management practices, changes climate-related C cycling in a common garden, climate warming experiment. Results from project surveys, field work and experiments will be synthesized and assessed in terms of ecosystem services (ES) related to climate mitigation (e.g., net C sequestration), biodiversity (e.g. habitat maintenance) and coastal protection (e.g., sediment stabilization) provided by NordSalt marsh habitats. We will advise on actions by end-users to synergistically manage Nordic salt marshes as NbS to enhance climate protection, increase biodiversity and enhance ecosystem services.