The context
The MedGardens team at Cleanwave Foundation is on a mission to develop a model of scalable stewardship of land and sea across the Mediterranean to ultimately achieve lasting ecological, economic, and societal benefits. The aim is to:
- Halt and reverse degradation of 27 hectares of priority habitats such as seagrass (P. oceanica) and kelp forest (Cystoseira s.l.).
- Boost biodiversity and recover endangered habitats.
- Prevent CO₂ release and maintain blue carbon storage (1,300 tons/ha/year).
- Evaluate ecosystem service benefits for coastal communities.
The challenges
- Seagrass restoration has variable success rates (20-90%), driven by complex coastal dynamics and unpredictable upstream factors.
- Targeting passive vs. active reforestation is key to maximising success rates. Standardised monitoring to measure impact is also key and difficult to achieve.
The outcome
- Integrated MedGarden’s field data with our satellite-derived products to generate a high-resolution seagrass species baseline map, restoration suitability index that accounts for impact drivers, and restoration uplift for extent and carbon.
- Identified that one of the original restoration sites overlapped with an area where there was significant degradation: >50% of all seagrass loss happened between 2001 and 2023.
Listen to a snippet of our participation to Mediterranean Posidonia Network's webinar on Satellite-Based Posidonia Mapping, where Jeremiah, our Head of Analytics & Data, shared insights into our project with MedGardens, an initiative by Cleanwave Foundation.
