| abstracts | The Vistula Lagoon is the 2nd largest Lagoon in the Baltic Sea, which is roughly 91 km long, 6.8–13 km wide and has an average depth of 2.7 m. It is shared by Poland and Russia and the only access to the Baltic Sea is located in the Russian part. The resulting isolation of the Polish part from the sea is one of the reasons of its economic decline after the transition to market economy in the last decade of the 20th century and afterwards. The economic rehabilitation of Vistula Lagoon requires integrated management incorporating multiple ecological, social and economic interactions and couplings. The Systems Approach Framework (SAF) was found to be a suitable toolkit for this purpose. Importantly, it is the first practical application of this complex methodology to coastal zone management in real life situation in Poland. This SAF application consisted of five consecutive steps: (1) issue identification, done in a process of consultations with local authorities, coastal and environmental managers, fishermen and tourist operators using the DPSIR and CATWOE frameworks; as a result it was concluded that the local economy could be boosted by tourism thanks to the expansion of ports, marinas and navigation channels, (2) system design, where key linkages between ecological, social and economic components were determined, (3) system formulation, where data were compiled and a numerical model for different dredging scenarios was set up, (4) system appraisal, where the numerical model was validated with the collected data, scenarios were simulated and the results were analyzed in order to estimate the costs of channel dredging and their maintenance for the adopted scenarios, and (5) system output, where the results of the scenario simulations were discussed and evaluated with stakeholders in order to choose the ultimate solution. Overview of the whole process is presented here and economic consequences of implementation of different navigational channels refurbishment scenarios are discussed. |