The healthier our ecosystems, the healthier are the planet and its people. The UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 recognizes the need to massively accelerate global restoration of degraded ecosystems, to fight the climate heating crisis, enhance food security and protect biodiversity on the planet. Seagrass beds are remarkable ecosystem engineers of tropical and temperate coastlines that provide essential services.

In northern Spain, the most abundant seagrass species is Zostera noltei. This species which occupies intertidal estuarine habitats, plays a fundamental role in the coastal socio-economic system, providing ecosystem services of great value to society, such as carbon sequestration, coastal protection and hosting a high diversity of fauna. Despite their importance for coastal ecosystems, this ecosystem is highly threatened by the combined effect of natural and human impacts. While the loss of these ecosystems will result in the loss of the ecosystem services they provide, their conservation and restoration will help to ensure that these services can be provided and that the livelihoods and well-being of the people who depend on them can be maintained. Ecosystem restoration is the process for reversing the degradation of ecosystems and improving the productivity and capacity of ecosystems to meet the needs of society. Accordingly, the motivation to its restoration may arise from any of the many potential benefits they provide.

So, how does ecosystem restoration contribute to the provision of ecosystem services?

The main challenge coastal managers have to deal with before implementing restoration actions is the lack of approaches that help to address questions such as: What actions are necessary to enhance specific ecosystem services? What areas are suitable for restoration? or What are the ecosystem services benefits resultant from restoration actions?

Answering these questions will not only help coastal managers in their decision-making processes, but will also contribute to better respond to European biodiversity and climate change policies and support the implementation of nature-based solutions (i.e. restoration of coastal ecosystems) to increase coastal resilience. Moreover, today there are still important gaps that prevent restoration from happening on a large scale, such as the development of monitoring systems and decision-support tools and the development of policies that support restoration.

The MarshA project addresses these needs by providing managers with the knowledge and innovative tools (e.g. remote sensing based techniques) that are essential to answer these questions and thus support the planning and design of seagrass restoration strategies.