ACTNOW
Advancing understanding of Cumulative Impacts on European marine biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services for human wellbeing.
Human activities have created unprecedented, cumulative threats resulting in stunning losses of biodiversity in our oceans. This is leading to well-documented declines in seafood resources, losses of iconic an culturally valuable habitats, and impacts on the functioning an regulation of global cycles. Robust, science-based advice is urgently needed to implement actions to halt biodiversity loss and restore natural habitats and ecosystems services. The EU project ACTNOW addresses this challenge by advancing our understanding of and predicting how multiple stressors and cumulative human impacts influence marine biodiversity. And translate this knowledge into usable advices and tools for decision makers.
Duration
Scientific abstract
ACTNOW is a state-of-the-art work programme that provides regulators and decision-makers the knowledge and fit-for-purpose tools they need to combat biodiversity loss in coastal and marine habitats threatened by climate change (CC) interacting with other local and regional drivers. We are advancing and applying state-of-the-art tools to deliver concrete scientific support to regulators charged with implementing adaptation and mitigation measures, sustainably expand the blue economy and provide nationally determined contributions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 1. We develop and apply a systemic Integrated Biodiversity Assessment (IBA) framework to: 2. Co-create regionalized ‘what if’ scenarios of multiple interacting drivers and management actions to forecast impacts on the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in European coastal and marine regions; 3. Develop a systemic approach for the integrated impact assessment of coastal and marine ecosystem processes and services, and assessment of the state of coastal and marine ecosystems health, and resilience to cumulative pressures; 4. Understand the combined impacts of different types of pressures or perturbations on coastal and marine biodiversity and ecosystems condition; 5. Increase understanding of the biological mechanisms determining the response of organisms and ecosystems to environmental changes and limiting their adaptation capacity, and the implications for the management of marine areas, habitats and species; 6. Employ state-of-the-art biologging technology and molecular methods, in combination with knowledge on oceanographic processes to understand the effects of agents of change on the ecology and population dynamics through marine food webs; 7. Rationalise and advance strategies for monitoring European populations of marine species at the top of food chains, and have life histories that make them especially susceptible to change; 8. Integrate existing and new biodiversity data and knowledge from multiple origins, including other EU (Horizon 2020 and previous framework Programmes), international and national research projects; 9. Develop technologies, methods and models to quantify and forecast how cumulative anthropogenic perturbations can affect the sustainability, productivity and resilience of marine ecosystems against environmental drivers;