DiverSea

Project name: DiverSea - Integrated Observation, Mapping, Monitoring and Prediction for Functional Biodiversity of Coastal Seas

Project duration: september 2023 to agaust 2027

Website https://www.ntnu.edu/diversea

In the EU, nearly half of the population live less than 50km from the sea. These populations are continuously growing, yet the ecosystems supporting them are not. In fact, global macro-organism abundance and diversity have declined dramatically and at an increasing pace over the past 50 years. Similarly, coastal and marine ecosystems experienced a barrage of impacts, precipitating catastrophic declines in marine species abundance and diversity, and degradation of the habitats supporting them.

Coastal ecosystems are heavily used and impacted yet their integrity is critical for societal well-being due to the access, resources, and ecosystem services they provide. In addition to current goods and services, these habitats will play key future roles for food and water security, clean energy production and climate change mitigation, including blue carbon balance. This conflict between increasing anthropogenic pressures, but concurrent societal dependence, has shifted our collective focus from one centered on use and economic exploitation to a viewpoint recognizing the indubitable link between societal wellbeing and sustainable ocean conservation.

Focusing on specific fields of expertise, specific problems or in specific ecosystems, will yield only specific solutions, constrained by the boundaries of study system, availability and quality of the data, or ecosystem at hand. Marine and coastal biodiversity observation, mapping, monitoring and prediction, at a pan- European scale is a general challenge that requires general, appropriate and accessible solutions, combining state- of-the-art techniques and information systems in an overarching and transdisciplinary framework.

DiverSEA presents an unorthodox, ambitious and beyond-state-of-the-art approach, aiming to develop novel marine observation and monitoring technology by combining:

1. Development of molecular monitoring approaches, low coverage/cost genomic data to document genetic diversity and the experimentation required to quantify uncertainties in marine eDNA/eRNA interpretation;
2. Integration of emerging technologies such as eDNA sampling with remote and autonomous vehicles collection other EOVs;
3. Case studies, integrating molecular approaches, autonomous vehicles, citizen science, existing monitoring program data collection and satellite remote sensing, covering EOVs/EBVs, for comprehensive mapping of important marine habitats;
4. A novel, generalized, data integration, processing and interrogation AI-ML architecture that processes incoming field and remote sensing biological, physical and biogeochemical data from diverse sources;
5. An interactive platform to communicate the scientific outcomes of DiverSEA to policy makers, stakeholders and the general public, the “Biodiversity Services Dashboard”. The dashboard visualizes key environmental and socio-economic indicators with quantified scenarios for societal and functional biodiversity interaction, without confronting end-users with the underlying scientific complexity.

By concentrating on developing and coupling emerging technologies, data processing and analysis in a transdisciplinary, end-user-oriented framework, DiverSEA will advance marine and coastal ecosystem mapping, monitoring, and planning tools to a new level of data and knowledge structuring.

This approach will generate new insights in both the patterns of coastal and marine biodiversity and EGS provision, and the processes driving these patterns. As well as its value in marine ecosystem management, this will engage policy makers, business operators and the general public with understanding of the causes and consequences of marine biodiversity dynamics and decline.

LPN CONTIBUTION

LPN is the leader of work package 5 “WP5 - Consilience, public interface, communication, dissemination & exploitation” which aims to communicate the project, as well as coordinating citizen science activities with partner AKD.

As part of this project, LPN will also be involved in the case study of Portugal's Atlantic Coast, namely the Luiz Saldanha Marine Park.

COORDINATOR BENEFICIARY

ASSOCIATED BENEFICIARIES

FINANCING