Workplan

Introduction
The target is to assess and forecast the degradation of the lagoon ecosystems by predicting their pollution and their geomorphological evolutions, and furnishing tools to help decision makers. To achieve these objectives a simultaneous bio-geochemical, geomorphological approach is used and the socio-economic dimension is taken into account. Moreover, the study concerns the three entities which make up the lagoon geosystem (near coast, reef, lagoon itself) and considers the three geobodies (soils, sediments, water)

Overall workplan structure and description of workpackages
Different steps are foreseen in the overall workplan:

1. The first step is a "background study" of lagoon ecosystems. It is to characterize as far as possible the past and present state of contamination and sanding up, the present socio-economic state in the sectors considered in the project and to evaluate existing and potential protection measures. This step is divided in two workpackages.

• Workpackage 1 brings together available scientific literature data and present socio-economic data, the characterization of the geomorphological past and present state and the geological background.
• Workpackage 2 concerns the collection of present state data i.e. sampling of soils, sediments and water, analysing the samples using physical, chemical and biochemical approaches to produce geomorphological maps and maps of pollution distribution in water and sediments. This should lead to the evaluation of lagoon morphological changes and the origins and levels of contamination.

2. The second step (Workpackage 3) provides the near future morphodynamic evolution scenarios of the lagoon and the possible consequent pollution distributions and levels.

3. In the third step (Workpackage 4) sociological and economical data will be coupled to scientific data from the previous workpackages in order to assess the environmental impact of human activity and sustainability of the lagoons.

4. The next step (Workpackage 5) uses all the information provided by the previous workpackages to produce guidelines for the political decision maker.

The dissemination and exploitation of results are organized in the frame of the coordination tasks (Workpackage 6). This workpackage, which extends over the entire duration of the project, is particularly concerned with the assurance that the stakeholders will be closely involved with the project, so that their views and requirements would be identified clearly and addressed effectively (see also dissemination activities). The collection of feedback will serve to 'measure' impact and report on it. This will form the core of the technology implementation plan (TIP) at the end of the project. The TIP will also include the Consortium's agreement concerning the maintenance of the website beyond the lifetime of the project.