The East Kalimantan Programme (EKP) aims to enhance and support long-term scientific cooperation in coastal zone research between research groups from Indonesia and the Netherlands.

The Research Cluster: "Upsetting the balance in the Mahakam Delta: past, present and future impacts of sea-level rise, climate change, upstream controls and human intervention on sediment and mangrove dynamics" is one of the clusters that is funded within the EKP programme.

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Objective

The objective of the cluster is to study the impact of external forcing factors such as sea-level rise, climate change, upstream sediment, as well as human interference on past, present and future development of the Mahakam delta in different time scales. We will pay special attention to determine the resilience and restoration potentials of mangrove ecosystems and develop models forecasting catastrophic changes in coastal ecosystems, and understand issues of governance across scales, and how ecosystem nestedness and governance nestedness can be linked. The cluster will use the Delft3D model (Delft Hydraulics) as a tool to integrate data into scenarios and will extend it from its present decadal time scale limitation to millennial time scales, enabling to better predict future changes in the Mahakam delta.

Scientific relevance

We expect that this integrated multidisciplinary research effort will lead to a deeper understanding of the delicate abiotic and biotic checks and balances in delta systems in general. To out knowledge the Mahakam delta will be the first tropical delta for which short-term morphodynamic models and longterm sedimentary-stratigraphic models will be integrated into a single comprehensive model that enables studing the impact of long-term processes as sea-level rise as well as short term sudden anthropogenic ecological disturbances simultaneously. This model can play an important role in coastal management. Governance systems, from national government to local land and marine tenure systems, focusing on sustaining and enhancing sources of resilience in societies and life-supporting ecosystems, will reap the benefits from a versatile delta model that is able to produce scenarios in different spatial and time scales. Our research will thus lead to socially robust knowledge with recommendations for improved management of land and water, sensu the Ecosystem Approach of the CBD, the development of tools for matching ecosystem processes to societal levels of organization, and, through our cooperation with the Queensland study, we provide a test of the costs and benefits of (good) governance.