Sfântu Gheorghe Marine and Fluvial Research Station (SCMF) is the home of the Coastal Research Group of Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest. It operates since 2002 at Sf. Gheorghe village, Tulcea County, providing local support for developing research and educative activities in marine and coastal sciences. SCMF is a national leading actor in monitoring, analysing, understanding and predicting the behaviour of coastal, marine and fluvial systems in support of optimal management of coastal resources and activities.
The Coastal Research Group members deal with a wide range of coastal topics: coastal landscape evolution (deltaic lobes, barrier spits and islands), coastal geomorphology (beach morphodynamics, foredune development, nearshore sandbars behaviour), coastal climate (storm evolution and impact, climate variability), nearshore hydrodynamics, river mouth behaviour.
By its location in the Danube Delta at the mouth of St. Gheorghe branch SCMF provides researchers and students the logistic support for undertaking observations, measurements and field experiments on natural processes, modelling factors and associated landforms or on coping ways of human communities to local environmental conditions while providing the opportunity of exploring the entire coastal system including current and past form (geomorphology, geology), controlling factors of coastal processes: wind, waves, currents (oceanography), biodiversity (biogeography, ecology, palaeontology) or landscape (management, spatial planning, anthropology).
The research activities cover therefore a wide range of areas and topics aimed at gaining a better understanding of marine and coastal environment functionality and its changes at various spatial and temporal scales for configuring the optimal conditions for living in such a sensitive environment.
