Restoring Britain’s seascapes: new study calls for urgent habitat reconnection to meet climate and biodiversity goals - University of Portsmouth

Scientists warn that the future of our oceans and climate goals depends on reconnecting the ecological threads that hold coastal habitats together

The new study, launched at the International Seascape Symposium II at ZSL (Zoological Society of London), and published to align with UN Ocean Decade Conference represents two years of work by an international team led by the University of Portsmouth, with support from ZSL and University of Edinburgh.

It delivers the most comprehensive report to date of how coastal habitats in temperate regions function not in isolation, but as interconnected systems - a concept known as ecological connectivity.

“Coastal habitats like oyster reefs, saltmarshes, kelp forests and seagrass meadows are often treated as separate entities in policy and restoration, but in reality, they are tightly bound together by the flows of water, life, and energy,” said lead author Professor Joanne Preston, Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. “To meet our global climate and biodiversity targets, we need to restore the entire seascape.”

Published in NPI Ocean Sustainability to coincide with World Ocean Day and the mid-point of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the paper makes the case that reconnecting these habitats is fundamental to repairing the damage caused by centuries of degradation, and to achieving international targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Paris Agreement, and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Dr Philine zu Ermgassen, Changing Oceans Group, University of Edinburgh said, “ecological connectivity allows organisms, nutrients, sediment, and energy to move between different marine habitats. These exchanges drive crucial ecosystem services - from carbon storage to water filtration, coastal protection to fishery productivity.”