Environmental Science and Coastal Ecology
16:05 - 17:25 | Meeting Room 6 (Level 0)
Chair: Prof. Sebastiano D'Amico
Ms Annukka Köppen
Department of Construction and Property Management, Faculty for the Built Environment
Coastal cultural heritage faces increasing vulnerability due to climate change. Especially in Malta, the risk of loss is heightened due to climate hazards compounded by development pressure, human stressors, and properties of materials used in heritage assets.
In the local heritage sector, governance and conservation approaches, constrained by limited resources, face a challenge as risk assessments are not being implemented, and conservation work is carried out reactively, with restoration undertaken after damage has occurred.
Even internationally, existing risk assessments for cultural heritage frequently under-represent or inadequately assess and integrate cultural significance in the risk factors. There is a critical need to integrate strategic and systematic cultural significance assessments and weighting into risk assessments to inform decision-making for heritage assets at stake.
A Climate-MATCH project component addresses this by developing a framework that merges a cultural significance assessment with a rapid multi-risk assessment for coastal heritage. The framework evaluates cultural significance through a heritage values matrix, which integrates heritage values, character-defining elements, and risks from hazards acting on exposed coastal landscapes, specifically analysing the exposure and impacts on heritage assets and their vulnerabilities within a multi-risk environment. The framework has been validated through various case studies in Malta and Gozo, enabling prioritisation for interventions.
By focusing on the outcomes of this project and case studies, conclusions can be drawn on how the data can support policymakers in prioritisation and managing the risks of coastal assets. This allows targeted preservation strategies, preventive conservation, and informed resource allocation.
Ms Leanne Camilleri
Department of Biology, Faculty of Science
Coastal sand dune ecosystems in Malta are among the most dynamic and threatened habitats of the Mediterranean, hosting specialised flora that is highly sensitive to environmental pressures and human disturbance. Understanding their long-term vegetation dynamics is essential for evaluating resilience, adaptive capacity, and restoration potential, particularly within the EU Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) framework.
Currently, Malta lacks long-term, habitat-specific baselines, and this study aims to fill this gap by analysing temporal shifts in plant species composition in sand dune systems over the past decades. Data from Golden Bay (Il-Bajja tal-Mixquqa), located in north-west Malta, was used as part of a pilot analysis. Vegetation data compiled from eight independent surveys were compared with newly collected data using multivariate analyses. The resulting Principal Coordinates Analysis reveals three distinct chronological clusters (1970s–1990s, early 2000s, and 2025) along the main temporal gradient. Additionally, the analysis highlights a clear isolation of the 2025 assemblage, indicating an emerging floristic signature distinct from that of earlier decades. These results reveal a complex ecological trajectory, suggesting Malta’s dune vegetation is not static but responds dynamically to a combination of past degradation, potential restoration efforts, and ongoing environmental and climatic pressures.
By integrating historical data with contemporary surveys, this study establishes the first habitat-specific temporal baseline for Malta’s coastal sand dunes. The findings highlight the urgent need for long-term, standardised monitoring frameworks to detect ecological change, inform evidence-based restoration actions, and strengthen the resilience of sand dune ecosystems to ongoing human and climatic pressures.
Prof. Sandro Lanfranco
Department of Biology, Faculty of Science
Coastal saline marshlands are critical yet threatened ecosystems, particularly in land-limited micro-island states like Malta, where anthropogenic pressure is intense. Long-term monitoring is essential to understand the impacts of land use on these fragile systems. We analysed vegetation change over a 30-year baseline at two contrasting sites: Marsaxlokk, a marshland within an industrial port complex restored in the 1990s, and G魔adira s-Safra, a protected nature reserve subject to conservative management.
We synthesised historical vegetation data (1992–1996) with contemporary surveys (2022–2025) to assess shifts in community composition. Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCO) revealed divergent ecological trajectories. Marsaxlokk displayed high variability along PCO2, indicating a significant structural shift. This likely reflects the stabilisation of initial post-restoration flora, characterised by the loss of sensitive halophytes and an ingress of ruderals. By 2025, Marsaxlokk supported a low-diversity assemblage dominated by Arthrocaulon macrostachyum, with species richness declining by 70% (from 68 to 20 species).
Conversely, phytocoenoses at G魔adira s-Safra exhibited far lower variability. The site remained dominated by Limbarda crithmoides, resembling adjacent rocky coastal communities, and species richness remained stable, increasing by 10% (65 to 72 species). This study underscores the critical value of long-term ecological datasets in quantifying management legacies. The contrasting outcomes at these sites highlight the urgent need for targeted, site-specific conservation strategies to safeguard the resilience and biodiversity of Malta’s remaining saline marshlands.
Dr Jane Spiteri
Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education, Faculty of Education
Europe is the fastest-warming continent worldwide, and the Mediterranean is a globally significant climate hotspot, experiencing accelerated warming, intensifying heat extremes, water stress, wildfire risk, and coastal hazards that compound existing social and economic pressures. Children under eight are among the groups most exposed to these intersecting risks, yet they remain inconsistently recognised as stakeholders in climate governance and adaptation planning across the region. The current study argues that treating children as stakeholders is not a rhetorical gesture but a practical and ethical necessity: children hold situated knowledge of local environments; they experience climate impacts through schools, homes and public space; and they have participation rights grounded in international child rights law and clarified in recent guidance on children’s rights and the environment.
Synthesising recent climate assessments for the Mediterranean and contemporary scholarship on child participation, climate emotions and intergenerational justice, this study offers a Mediterranean-specific framework for meaningful child stakeholder engagement. The framework combines (i) rights-based participation criteria (space, voice, audience, influence), (ii) developmental appropriateness across early childhood, (iii) affective safeguarding that takes climate-related emotions and distress seriously, and (iv) equity-oriented inclusion, especially for marginalised children in coastal, rural, and displaced communities. The study culminates with an agenda for policy, practice and research, proposing concrete mechanisms for influence with care: child climate assemblies, participatory design for climate-resilient public spaces, and education-to-governance pathways that make children’s contributions visible in decisions, budgets and monitoring.
Dr Lisa Pace
The Edward de Bono Institute for Creative Thinking and Innovation
Sustainability futures are characterised by uncertainty, competing priorities and resource conflicts. Interventions aimed at realising these futures are often presented as ‘triple-win’ solutions, delivering climate mitigation, enabling economic growth, and sustaining coastal livelihoods. However, their implementation reveals tensions that challenge linear models of sustainable growth. This study critically examines both the opportunities and the tensions of scaling two sustainability solutions in coastal and marine contexts to achieve SDG 14. It draws on empirical data from three workshops involving scientists and stakeholders across European maritime regions of the SEA-EU alliance to investigate how the participants navigate through the tensions towards realising sustainable futures and the trade-offs involved. The findings highlight both opportunities for co-benefits and trade-offs between ecological protection and economic imperatives, as well as between innovation and traditional practices. The study offers insights for policy and practice on realising sustainability futures in marine and coastal contexts marked by competing economic interests, power dynamics, and diverse societal values.
Dr Sangeeta Kumari
Department of 福利在线免费 Systems, Faculty of 福利在线免费 and Communication Technology
Water quality monitoring is essential for protecting aquatic ecosystems and ensuring safe water resources in the EU and associated countries. Traditional sampling methods provide limited data and are resource-intensive. Recent technological advances have enabled more continuous, automated monitoring, but implementing comprehensive underwater sensor networks remains challenging. The Mediterranean region faces unique water quality issues due to its climate and human pressures. Only 40% of EU surface waters achieve good ecological status, with southern European countries particularly affected. The EU has prioritised real-time water quality monitoring through key directives. Smart underwater sensor networks offer potential for revolutionary monitoring capabilities, providing continuous, high-resolution data across diverse aquatic environments. These networks can enable early pollution detection, improve understanding of ecosystem dynamics, and support evidence-based decision-making. However, research challenges persist in network optimisation, energy efficiency, and data processing. The AQUA-INTEL project aims to develop next-generation underwater sensor networks for comprehensive water-quality monitoring in the Mediterranean and broader European contexts. As human pressures intensify, there's an urgent need to quantify, monitor, and mitigate pollutant impacts across multiple scales. Current monitoring efforts often fail to capture complex interactions in large, interconnected aquatic systems. Addressing these challenges requires interdisciplinary collaboration, combining expertise in sensor technology, data analytics, environmental science, and policy implementation. By developing innovative monitoring solutions, researchers and policymakers can enhance water resource management and safeguard Europe's water bodies for future generations.
Dr Jean-Paul Mollicone
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Microplastics are a growing environmental concern that some conventional water treatment methods miss, and new legislation is demanding their removal. The research involves a fundamentally new, low-energy, bio-inspired solution: structured-channel geometries that harness naturally sustained vortices to trap microplastics without the need for membranes or chemicals. Drawing design cues from the cross-step filtration in fish gills, the wakes generated by aquatic vegetation, and textured aquatic surfaces, the research combines high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with targeted laboratory experiments. This work will deliver validated design rules for this vortex-assisted separation approach, laying the groundwork for scalable water treatment applications.
Dr Jules Siedenburg
Institute of Earth Systems
Researchers at UM and MCAST have been conducting research on using microalgae to support agriculture for the past three years. They have reviewed the literature on this technological prospect, gathered empirical evidence from field trials, and set this in the context of threats to food systems.
Their key finding to date is that using dried microalgal biomass as both a crop input and feed supplement could deliver major benefits to both farmers and wider society. To minimise the barriers to future uptake by farmers, they focus on the most widely commercialised and affordable microalgae species, namely Arthrospira platensis, or ‘spirulina’, which could potentially be grown locally.
Potential benefits to farmers include increased farm productivity, enhanced resilience, and improved product quality. Microalgae may also offer a scope to substitute for conventional inputs like agrochemicals. Critically, it is well-suited to help farmers face daunting threats from rising input costs, land degradation and climate change.
Potentially, one wider benefit is fostering food security by boosting the economic viability and resilience of farming. Another is improving human health by delivering biofortified foods and reducing chemical residues in food. Still another is environmental benefits like combating pollution and biodiversity loss.
Next step, research priorities have been identified, but depend on future funding. One is generating evidence that could provide actionable guidance for farmers, notably on the capacity of microalgae to substitute for conventional inputs (e.g., fertilisers) and to help farmers cope with key biotic or abiotic stresses (e.g., heat). Another is estimating the health benefits of ‘biofortified’ foods in a given jurisdiction, including possible reductions in medical expenditures. A third is conducting on-farm experimentation to obtain empirical data on how these inputs impact farming in different agroecological contexts.