Forecasting and responding to ecological, social and economic impacts of environmental effects on European speciesInternal

Topic

To predict future changes in species distributions, novel combinations of modelling, field and laboratory data are required to produce forecasts at spatio-temporal scales relevant to individual organisms, but across large spatial scales required for predicting biogeographic shifts and vulnerability hotspots. This technology is not currently openly available to researchers within the EuroMarine Network or wider European marine research community.

Objectives

1. The Working Group will form a focal discussion point for leading researchers to discuss and learn novel scientific advances in the modelling of biogeographic distributions, changes to species distributions due to climate change and additional anthropogenic stressors, and the potential for integrating species interatctions, that are relevant to European coastal marine ecosystems, and the policies and directives governing their management and use.
2. The Working Group meeting in Plymouth in 2017 will train researchers from EuroMarine and non-member institutes on mechanistic Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) techniques.
3. Attendees of the Plymouth meeting will be provided with the mechanistic SDM model code developed by the workshop organizers and instructions on the use of the model code to determine the distribution of a target species.
4. Attendees will gain information on Best Practice in the collection of input parameters for environmental and biological variables, and receive both online and face-to-face training and advice from experts within the organizing committee and invited researchers who are worldleading in this field. Participants will also work to expand the range of species for which the model can be run, responding to demand from the European scientific and policy communities by increasing the applicability across a range of indicator species selected to monitor Good Environmental Status for the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and OSPAR Assessments, for which predictive models are not currently available.

Expected Outcomes

1. ForeSEE will engage experts from within and outside the EuroMarine network to provide a standardized, robust modelling approach for the prediction of current and future changes in the biogeographic distribution of coastal marine species of both ecological and commercial importance within European marine ecosystems.
2. A position paper will be written by the workshop team and workshop attendees.
3. Euromarine ForeSEE Working Group member researchers will be trained in the use of the mechanistic Species Distribution Model that they can subsequently apply to their key species of interest within European marine ecosystems.
4. The organising team will actively communicate the Euromarine workshop and outputs via their institute websites, twitter accounts and additional online media sources to the Euromarine scientific community.
5. The Working Group will regularly disseminate outputs and progress to the European policy community via existing national and EU contacts, membership of science-policy boards and networks, and via the EuroMarine website news section.