English summary

The salt meadows on the west coast of Sweden are valuable because of their biodiversity. They are often small, a few hectares, and often surrounded by ice-sculptured granite rocks. The meadows grazed by sheep or cows are most important for flora and birds.

The height of the tidal water on the west coast of Sweden is small, only a couple of decimeters. There is also an archipelago with sheltering islands which protects the coast from the biggest waves. 

Because of climate change with higher sea level, more frequent hard winds and shorter periods with ground frost, many salt meadows are now eroding. To stop or slow down the erosion process, we are building different nature-based structures together with landowners and local entrepreneurs, to learn which method will be the best in different situations. Maybe we can even reverse the situation and make the sediments in the bays build back the lost parts of the meadows. The knowledge we get, will be spread among entrepreneurs and the goal is that they will use the nature-based methods in other projects.

As pilots in the project, we have chosen one salt meadow in each of three of the nature reserves along the coast north of Gothenburg. They are all Natura 2000 areas. The landowners are interested in contributing to the project and are involved in planning the constructions and collecting materials to build them.