Unmanaged realignments – success and co-benefits of coastal wetland restoration through accidentally breached sea defences.

These scholarships will cover full-time PhD tuition fees for three years (subject to satisfactory academic performance) and will provide a £900 per annum research training support grant (RTSG) to help support the PhD researcher.

Applicants who already hold a doctoral degree or who have been registered on a programme of research leading to the award of a doctoral degree on a full-time basis for more than one year (or part-time equivalent) are NOT eligible to apply for an award.

Please note: you will automatically be entered into the competition for the Full Award, unless you state otherwise in your application.

The scholarship will cover tuition fees at the Home rate and a maintenance allowance of £19,000 (tbc) per annum for three years (subject to satisfactory academic performance).

This scholarship also comes with £900 per annum for three years as a research training support grant (RTSG) allocation to help support the PhD researcher.

Committee on Climate Change. (2018). Managing the coast in a changing climate. Committee on Climate Change.
Cooper, J. A. G., & Pilkey, O. H. (2004). Sea-level rise and shoreline retreat: time to abandon the Bruun Rule. Global and Planetary Change, 43(3–4), 157–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2004.07.001
Hall, J. W., Sayers, P. B., Walkden, M. J. A., & Panzeri, M. (2006). Impacts of climate change on coastal flood risk in England and Wales: 2030–2100. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 364(1841), 1027–1049. https://doi.org/doi:10.1098/rsta.2006.1752
Schuerch, M., Mossman, H. L., Moore, H. E., Christie, E., & Kiesel, J. (2022). Invited perspectives: Managed realignment as a solution to mitigate coastal flood risks – optimizing success through knowledge co-production. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 22(9), 2879–2890. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-2879-2022
Turner, R. K., Burgess, D., Hadley, D., Coombes, E., & Jackson, N. (2007). A cost-benefit appraisal of coastal managed realignment policy. Global Environmental Change, 17(3–4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2007.05.006
Williams, N., & Dale, J. (2023). Unmanaged realignment: Recent examples and the morphological evolution of naturally breached flood defences. Ocean and Coastal Management, 242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2023.106715

Other recommended reading:
Cooper, J. A. G., O’Connor, M. C., & McIvor, S. (2020). Coastal defences versus coastal ecosystems: A regional appraisal. Marine Policy, 111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2016.02.021
Dale, J., Burnside, N. G., Hill-Butler, C., Berg, M. J., Strong, C. J., & Burgess, H. M. (2020). The use of unmanned aerial vehicles to determine differences in vegetation cover: A tool for monitoring coastal wetland restoration schemes. Remote Sensing, 12(24). https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12244022
Kiesel, J., MacPherson, L. R., Schuerch, M., & Vafeidis, A. T. (2022). Can Managed Realignment Buffer Extreme Surges? The Relationship Between Marsh Width, Vegetation Cover and Surge Attenuation. Estuaries and Coasts, 45(2), 345–362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-021-00984-5
Leonardi, N., Carnacina, I., Donatelli, C., Ganju, N. K., Plater, A. J., Schuerch, M., & Temmerman, S. (2018). Dynamic interactions between coastal storms and salt marshes: A review. Geomorphology, 301. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2017.11.001
Liu, Z., Fagherazzi, S., & Cui, B. (2021). Success of coastal wetlands restoration is driven by sediment availability. Communications Earth and Environment, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00117-7
Mossman, H. L., Davy, A. J., & Grant, A. (2012). Does managed coastal realignment create saltmarshes with “equivalent biological characteristics” to natural reference sites? Journal of Applied Ecology, 49(6), 1446–1456. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23353524
Saintilan, N., Horton, B., Törnqvist, T. E., Ashe, E. L., Khan, N. S., Schuerch, M., Perry, C., Kopp, R. E., Garner, G. G., Murray, N., Rogers, K., Albert, S., Kelleway, J., Shaw, T. A., Woodroffe, C. D., Lovelock, C. E., Goddard, M. M., Hutley, L. B., Kovalenko, K., … Guntenspergen, G. (2023). Widespread retreat of coastal habitat is likely at warming levels above 1.5 °C. Nature, 621(7977). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06448-z
Schuerch, M., Spencer, T., Temmerman, S., Kirwan, M. L., Wolff, C., Lincke, D., McOwen, C. J., Pickering, M. D., Reef, R., Vafeidis, A. T., Hinkel, J., Nicholls, R. J., & Brown, S. (2018). Future response of global coastal wetlands to sea-level rise. Nature, 561(7722), 231–234. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0476-5