Project description
Estimating the resilience of our ecosystems
Ecosystems provide critical services that make life possible – from bacteria decomposing waste and plants cleaning the air. Therefore, it’s important to maintain resilience and prevent irrevocable system changes. In the Anthropocene, global and local cumulative human pressures are heavily impacting ecosystems and threatening societies. In this context, the EU-funded RESET project will develop a framework to concretely estimate resilience in marine ecosystems and integrate it into management. The framework will be built on high-quality and innovative statistical methods and on the Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) of fishers. In the Mediterranean Sea, RESET will apply a three-step modelling approach to estimate resilience.
Objective
In the Anthropocene, global and local cumulative human pressures are heavily impacting ecosystems and threatening societies. Maintaining resilience, i.e. avoiding irrevocable system changes, is the only way to maintain the critical services that an ecosystem provides, and should be an objective of management. Recently, resilience has been deeply studied theoretically sparking interest in the whole scientific community. However, its integration into management practices is still rare due to methodological limitations. Standardised and applicable methods to estimate resilience empirically in natural systems are lacking. RESET will develop a framework to concretely estimate resilience in marine ecosystems and integrate it into management. The framework will be built on high-quality and innovative statistical methods and on the Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) of fishers. The work will be carried out in Chioggia, a city hosting a major Mediterranean fishery and a perfect location where Universities, research institutes, fishers and management bodies have a long story of collaborations. Using long-term time series of the Northern Adriatic Sea, an ecosystem hotspot of global changes and human pressures in the Mediterranean Sea, RESET will apply a three-step modelling approach to estimate resilience. The knowledge deriving from the modelling approach will be complemented with the LEK of fishers synthesised through structured interviews and participatory meetings. The inclusion of fishers in the process will favour a more proactive management approach. Finally, RESET will readily transfer the new methodologies and knowledge into management by cooperating with ISPRA, the Italian Public Body responsible for the application of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, the ecosystem-based management approach of the EU. The realisation of these three objectives will favor the integration of different approaches which is fundamental in order to sustainably exploit our resources.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesfisheries
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringecosystem-based management
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
35122 Padova
Italy