Establishment of the Research Project “Morphological Evolution of Coastal Seas – Past and Future” in October 2021 with participants from Poland, Germany and Chinaco-ordinated by the PI, Dr. Wenyan Zhang, Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon, Geesthacht, Germany, co-leader of the MargSeas TG.

General Task: Feasibility study of three exemplary Eurasian marginal seas (North Sea, Baltic Sea and South China Sea) / High-resolution reconstruction & future projection of coastal shelf morphology, coastline and hydrodynamics.

Run time: 2021-2024 

Goals of the DDE Marginal Seas R&D Project

The Executive Committee and the Science Committee of the Deep-time Digital Earth have approved for implementation a research project “Morphological Evolution of Coastal Seas – Past and Future” with the goals:

  1. Integrating interdisciplinary data describing the structure and evolution of three exemplary Eurasian marginal seas (North Sea, Baltic Sea and South China Sea) over the past 130 kyr (Marginal Seas Database Inventory - MSDI concept)
  2. Developing advanced numerical methods (“Big-data” driven & mechanistic) of complex geo-systems to generate environmental scenarios for Eurasian coastal areas on the global, regional and local level,
  3. Application of these methods to three targeted Eurasian marginal seas (North Sea, Baltic Sea and South China Sea) in order to reconstruct the geological and environmental history and to generate future scenarios for the end of this century by applying results of climate modeling,
  4. To mitigate the threats of coastal erosion and other environmental hazards by developing strategies of sustainable management of the coastal zones based on numerical experiments,
  5. Development of open digital platforms of FAIR data and model tools to allow societal stakeholders to generate cause-effect scenarios with the goal of optimizing impacts of environmental management.

The R&D Project Team

Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon, Geesthacht, Germany: 
One Postdoc from DDE funding
Comparable in-kind support: 
Dr. Wenyan Zhang (PI),
Dr. Eduardo Zorita.
Dr. David Greenberg
One planned PhD student

Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey (GMGS) / China Geological Survey(CGS):
Two Postdocs with full engagement for 2 yrs
In-kind support: Dr. Jinpeng Zhang

China University of Geosciences Wuhan (CUG):  
One PhD student with full engagement for 3 yrs
In-kind support: Prof. Dr. Xinong Xie

University of Szczecin, Poland (USZ):  
Two master students and one planned PhD position
In-kind support: Prof. Dr. Joanna Dudzinska-Nowak

 


Global Digital Elevation (Model National Geophysical Data Center's Marine Geology & Geophysics Division)

 

DDE R&D Project “Morphological Evolution of Coastal Seas – Past and Future”

Status: The project has successfully achieved its milestones for 2022 (Zhang 2022) Reconstruction of coastal morphology for the North Sea and Baltic Sea for the LGC was finalized. Results are being summarized in a manuscript which will be reported to DDE secretariat before submission to a scientific journal for publication. Data will be uploaded to the DDE Marginal Seas website and Helmholtz Data Center with open access to public as soon as the manuscript is submitted. Reconstruction of coastal morphology for the northern and western South China Sea was still in progress and will be finalized in 2023. Work on future projection initiated in January 2023.