Example environmental science dissertation topic 1:

Creating new salt marshes: New regulations and funding or abandonment to the sea?

Coastal realignment and development that takes account of erosion through sea-level rises is an important element in the creation and retention of bio-diversity upon the East Anglian Coast. Indeed, the need for new salt marshes to be developed is an explicit requirement made by the EU Habitats Directive. Given that artificially created salt marshes have, as Mossman, Davy and Grant (2012) note, significantly reduced levels of bio-diversity this dissertation asks what the future holds. Accordingly, it evaluates the competing arguments as whether the Habitats Directive needs to be redrawn, its requirements tightened and greater central government found to enable remedial action to be undertaken or, is this an area of coastline and associated wildlife that should now be abandoned to the sea.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Adam, P. (2002). ‘Salt marshes in a time of change’, Environmental Conservation, Vol. 29, pp. 39-61.
• Mossman, H.L., Davy, A.J. and Grant, A. (2012). ‘Does managed coastal realignment create salt marshes with ‘equivalent biological characteristics’ to natural reference sites?’, Journal of Applied Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2012.02198.x.
• Zedler, J.B. and Lindig-Cisneros, R. (2000). ‘Functional equivalency of restored and natural salt marshes’. In, Weinstein, M.P. and Kreeger,
• D.A. (eds), Concepts and Controversies in tidal marsh ecology, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, pp. 565-582.