Estuaries are considered valuable regions, both socio-economically and ecologically. The gradients in physical characteristics like salinity present result in a high biodiversity, while the provision of many ecosystem services have attracted human settlement and activity. Human activities and estuarine biodiversity are often at odds with each others, leading to socio-ecological trade-offs in decision- and policy-making in which the ecological perspective is generally underrepresented. In this study, we implemented a hydrodynamic model to explore the socio-ecological implications of reopening the closed-off Haringvliet estuary in the Netherlands. Our socio-ecological evaluation considers the trade-off between freshwater availability and ecological diversity. In the case of the Haringvliet, we have shown that partially opening the gates enhances diversity in the system against no — or limited — loss of freshwater availability. All in all, the use of representative (non-monetary) performance indicators for the considered stakeholders allowed us to demonstrate the trade-offs in a clear fashion: the Pareto-front resulting from these performance indicators is an intuitive visualization for decision- and policy-makers as well as the communication to the public.

Mangrove forests are increasingly valued as wave-attenuating buffers in coastal flood defence strategies. However, as mangroves are vulnerable to wave-induced erosion, this raises the question, how can the stability of these protective mangrove forests be promoted? To address this question, we investigate how mangrove dynamics in a microtidal system can be related to different types of foreshores. We used remote sensing to investigate mangrove fringe stability over multiple years in relation to intertidal mudflat width (i.e., emerged at low tide) and the presence stability of cheniers, which are sand bodies on top of muddy foreshores that are characteristic for eroding coastlines. In addition, we investigated local and short-term foreshore effects by measuring wave propagation across two cross-shore transects, one with a mudflat and chenier and one with a deeper tidal flat foreshore. The satellite images (Sentinel-2) revealed that mangrove dynamics over multiple years and seasons were related to chenier presence and stability. Without a chenier, a mudflat width of 110 m (95%CI: 76–183 m) was required to make mangrove expansion more likely than mangrove retreat. When a stable chenier was present offshore for two years or more, a mudflat width of only 16 m (95%CI: 0–43 m) was enough to flip chances in favor of mangrove expansion. However, mangrove expansion remained heavily influenced by seasonal changes, and was highly event driven, succeeding only once in several years. Finally, although mudflat width was a direct driver of mangrove expansion, and could be targeted as such in coastal management, our field measurements demonstrated that cheniers also have an indirect effect on mangrove expansion. These sand banks significantly reduce wave height offshore, thereby likely creating favorable conditions for mudflat accretion landward, and thus mangrove habitat expansion. This makes stabilization - and possibly also the temporary creation - of cheniers an interesting target for mangrove conservation and restoration.

The establishment of young organisms in harsh environments often requires a window of opportunity (WoO). That is, a short time window in which environmental conditions drop long enough below the hostile average level, giving the organism time to develop tolerance and transition into stable existence. It has been suggested that this kind of establishment dynamics is a noise-induced transition between two alternate states. Understanding how temporal variability (i.e. noise) in environmental conditions affects establishment of organisms is therefore key, yet not well understood or included explicitly in the WoO framework. In this paper, we develop a coherent theoretical framework for understanding when the WoO open or close based on simple dichotomous environmental variation. We reveal that understanding of the intrinsic timescales of both the developing organism and the environment is fundamental to predict if organisms can or cannot establish. These insights have allowed us to develop statistical laws for predicting establishment probabilities based on the period and variance of the fluctuations in naturally variable environments. Based on this framework, we now get a clear understanding of how changes in the timing and magnitude of climate variability or management can mediate establishment chances.