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EUROSION: Case Study: Danube Delta (Romania)

Type of Entry: Case Study
Description:

The area which is the subject of this report includes the territory of two administrative regional units, Tulcea county and Constanta County respectively. Both counties are making up a geographical unit of Romania named Dobrogea. The Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve stretches out on a total area of 5 800 km2 having the terrestrial limits of the reserve marked by the junction between the Dobrogea hills and the wetlands of the river system.

Enforcement of the Law no. 82/1993 established the DDBR as a special administrative regime for conservation and protection of biological diversity in the natural ecosystems of this territory and to develop human settlements and organize economic activities as well in accordance with the sustainability of the ecosystem.

Erosion, as a negative environmental factor in the coastal areas, is one of the crucial issue that DDBR coast faced in the last decades. Coastal defence works covered only 2 % from the DDBR coast which is a natural low sandy beach. These works consist of " hard" structure built in the former political regime protecting the fragile narrow beach at Portita. Consequently, in 2002 DDBRA recognised that coastal erosion was a significant problem and they included in their management plan for 2002-2006 the elaboration of studies aiming at coastal erosion processes understanding and control.

The Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve is one of the 11 pilot site selected throughout Europe having the common environmental issues: EROSION. The objective of the research was to review and analyse several aspects of these cases, which are grouped in 6 assessment levels: physical process level, policy level, technical and engineering level, socio-economical and financial level, social perception level and information level.

In the DDBR, the above mentioned levels have been analysed for the entire coastal area of the Danube Reserve and the social perceptions level has been investigated on three beach sectors, that were used for summer holiday makers. It should be emphasize that these are the only beaches visited by the tourist in the delta's littoral. The reasons for that are given by the presence of the two small localities, Sulina and Sf. Gheorghe which have access facilities and Portita, an old traditional touristic camp, situated on a spit bar between the lagoon system and the Black Sea.

Hopefully, the information from Romanian pilot site will contribute to the elaboration of the prototype for a local information system which will improve decision making processes for coastal management erosion at local level.

Keywords: Beach protection, Tools and techniques for beach management
Documents:
EUROSION Case Study: Danube Delta (Romania) (712.094 Bytes)
 
Contact: Claudia Coman
National Institute for Marine Research and Development “Grigore Antipa”
Telephone: +40 41 540 870 int 50 / +40 41 545 280