Estudio integrado del cambio socioambiental en la franja costera: una contibución a la gestión sostenible del litoral

Several research institutions have joined their efforts in order to face existing problems in the coastal fringe in a pluridisciplinary manner. They want to carry out the integrated study of the Empordà coastal fringe (Girona) and of the Llobregat Delta (Barcelona). The research is directed to the land use changes and the impacts of those changes over the coastal systems. The project wants to identify the positive and negative impacts and the human activities that have provoded them, in a series of environments: in the continental platform benthonic systems, in sedimentary systems (beaches, dunes, marshes), in acuifers and superficial waters, in agricultural soils and in the biodiversity in general. At the same time, the project wants to built tools for an integrated coastal zone management, by the means of the elaboration of a methodology of integrated analysis, the construction of sustainability indicators and a georeferred data base in a coastal GIS. The final objective is to make an integrated analysis of the environmental changes happened in the coastal fringe (fotic area of the interim continental platform, beaches, dunes, wetlands, acuifers, agrarian and urban areas), and the analysis of the driving forces of those changes (population, economic activities and their practices -specially agriculture, fishing, tourism and ecosystem conservation-, the model of territorial expansion and ways of life) in order to stablish integrated protocols of results, useful for an integrated Coastal Zone Management.