Building for nature- biodiversity on dikes
The Netherlands have been using dikes to protect their country from flooding events for a long time. Although the province of Zeeland is currently protected from flooding due to the dikes that have been constructed along its estuaries, these dikes are still being enforced with hard structures such as asphalt. Often, mastic asphalt is being applied on the lower parts of the dike to enforce the foreshores of the dike. Asphalt has a bad reputation when it comes to facilitating ecology of the foreshore, in part due to its structure and temperature. The foreshores of the dikes of Zeeland often border Natura 2000 areas and can have interesting ecology with for example with different weeds and shellfish. Since asphalt is being applied regularly in the field, it is important to improve the design of asphalt for ecology purposes while maintaining safety. In order to find the driving factors behind organisms growing on this type of asphalt current ecology on these substrates need to be monitored along with its environmental conditions.During the internship you will do field work along different (predetermined) dike areas in Zeeland (mainly at Zierikzee, De Val) and offshore frames installed with asphalt tiles at the NIOZ site. You will do an inventory of the ecological communities growing on the asphalt enforced areas of the lower dike based on community descriptions, and take pictures of these communities. Also the physical aspects of the different dikes and the mastic asphalt have to be described to build up a database in a Geographical Information System. Image classification of the pictures in GIS is also part of the job.You also will analyze your findings along with the environmental conditions that you have measured. The results could be useful for improving the design of mastic asphalt on dikes for both safety and ecology.
Research type: Ecological and Physical field work and data analysis (Zeeland, HZ)
Research level: Minor or Internship
Prerequisite: Interest in aquatic ecology and dikes
Partners: Deltares, HZ, Stichting Anemoon
Client: Edwin Paree