Study

Getting into the groove: opportunities to enhance the ecological value of hard coastal infrastructure using fine-scale surface textures

  • Published source details Coombes M.A., La Marca E.C., Naylor L.A. & Thompson R.C. (2015) Getting into the groove: opportunities to enhance the ecological value of hard coastal infrastructure using fine-scale surface textures. Ecological Engineering, 77, 314-323.

Actions

This study is summarised as evidence for the following.

Action Category

Create textured surfaces (≤1 mm) on intertidal artificial structures

Action Link
Biodiversity of Marine Artificial Structures
  1. Create textured surfaces (≤1 mm) on intertidal artificial structures

    A replicated, randomized, controlled study in 2010 on two intertidal rocky reefs on open coastlines in the Celtic Sea and the English Channel, UK (Coombes et al. 2015) found that creating textured surfaces on settlement plates increased the abundance of barnacles Chthamalus spp. on plates. After six months, average barnacle abundance was higher on scrape-textured plates (226–351/plate) than spray-textured plates (124–228/plate), and higher on both than on untextured plates (59–152/plate). Concrete settlement plates (50 × 50 mm) were made with and without textured surfaces, created by scraping with a wire brush or spraying with a water jet. Ten plates with each of ‘scrape-textured’, ‘spray-textured’ and untextured surfaces were randomly arranged horizontally at midshore on each of two rocky reefs in May 2010. Barnacles on plates were counted from photographs after six months.

    (Summarised by: Ally Evans)

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