Workshops

WORKSHOPS:

Bioenergetics and survival trajectories of Arctic fish in response to environmental stressor

Early Career Researcher Day

Getting the most out of Earth Observation data for marine & coastal science: new satellites, tools and research

Integration of marine and coastal institutional regimes across multiple sectors

Marine transboundary planning, combining conservation with conflict resolution

Natural analogues of an Arctic in rapid transition (AnalogueART); Using natural analogues to investigate the effects of climate change and ocean acidification on northern ecosystems

Setting priorities for research into Changing Ocean Biological Systems

Southern Ocean ecosystems: a workshop on the marine ecosystem assessment for the region (MEASO) and its general application

Time-varying ecological geography of the global ocean

Using data hubs to advance knowledge and improve our understanding of biodiversity state and dynamics

Visioning Global Ocean Futures

 

 

Bioenergetics and survival trajectories of Arctic fish in response to environmental stressors

Conveners: Benjamin Laurel, Trond Kristiansen and Franz Mueter

Bioenergetics Working Group of the Ecosystem Studies of Subarctic & Arctic Seas (ESSAS, IMBeR regional programme) has taken on the task of evaluating the impacts of environmental stress on the growth and energy content of gadid species in high latitude ecosystems. Juvenile gadids are considered some of the most abundant and important forage fish species in Arctic ecosystems, and shifts in the growth, condition and survival of these fish will likely impact regional population dynamics and ecosystems by way of new energetic pathways. Environmental regulation on growth and energy allocation during early life stages are especially dynamic and span two Critical Periods: 1) ‘first-feeding success’, a process that occurs shortly after hatch by way of interactions in the amount of yolk-reserve, environmental conditions and foraging capability of individual larvae, and 2) ‘overwintering success’, a process that is regulated by the size-at-age and energy density (lipid) of juvenile fish entering their first winter. Survival trajectory models have the challenge of incorporating these critical periods while integrating the unique physiology/behaviour, oceanography and seasonal processes of species from these high latitude regions.

The purpose of this workshop will be to provide biological understanding and modelling frameworks for Arctic and subarctic fish species during their early life history in response to shifting environmental stressors e.g., temperature, salinity, ocean acidification, toxins, etc. The workshop will focus on gadids (‘cod’) as these fish have ecological importance and broad latitudinal extent across subarctic and Arctic zones in both the Atlantic and Pacific basins. The seasonal bioenergetics of Arctic gadids are poorly characterized and limit broader predictions for climate impacts on Arctic and subarctic marine ecosystems. Two focal applications of the workshop will include: 1) Growth/energy-dependent recruitment paradigms i.e., models that incorporate biological data and environmental conditions across the summer and winter juvenile growth period to provide indices of recruitment, and 2) ‘Scaling up’ embryonic injury i.e., how do growth and developmental stressors during early development translate to size- or energy-dependent survival in the later juvenile period?

The workshop will incorporate both laboratory and observational biological data for gadids during their early life history (growth, development, lipid allocation) with modelling frameworks that can integrate processes across the egg (winter-spring), larval (spring-summer), and juvenile (summer-winter) early life history e.g., transport models, Individual Based Models, bioenergetics and Dynamic Energy Budget theory, etc. An overarching goal of the workshop will be to best capture the survival, growth and energetic trajectories of these fish in the first year of life, and possibly extend these outputs to other models that capture broader ecosystem changes in the Arctic. The workshop is open to abstract submission.

Early Career Researcher Day

Conveners: Prue Addison, Stephanie Brodie, Chris Cvitanovic, André Frainer, Maria Grazia Pennino, Priscila Lopes, Jon Lopez, Sabine Mathesius, Kelly Ortega-Cisneros, Natasa Vaidianu

IMBeR will be launching our new Interdisciplinary Marine Early Career Network (IMECaN) at the Open Science Conference in 2019. The overarching goal of IMECaN is to bring together early career marine researchers from across the globe working on topics related to the IMBeR Grand Challenges, and in doing so provide:

1. A networking platform for early career marine researchers to develop collaborations;
2. Training and development opportunities for early career marine researchers in areas not traditionally provided through formal education and training programmes (e.g. policy engagement, science communication, etc.); and
3. Leadership opportunities for early career marine researchers, particularly those from developing nations.

IMECaN activities will be overseen by a committee of IMBeR Early Career Scientists and will be open to all marine science students (Masters and PhDs) as well as early career researchers (less than seven years post-PhD, and less than six years since their first research appointment). For more information about IMECaN please refer to our IMECaN page.

To celebrate the launch of IMECaN there will be a dedicated Early Career Researcher workshop at the Open Science Conference, consisting of:

• Keynote talks from selected members of the IMBeR Scientific Steering Committee, who will reflect on their careers in marine science and the things that they wish they had known as early career researchers;
• There will be several training courses, for example, on communicating marine research to diverse audiences, how to make good graphics for your publications, and developing a policy pitch. Details to follow.
• A range of networking activities.

So, if you are an early career marine scientist and wish to participate, sign up for the Early Career Researcher Day by registering for the conference and clicking the box “I would like to attend the Early Career Researcher Day”.

Getting the most out of Earth Observation data for marine & coastal science: new satellites, tools and research

Conveners: Gordon Campbell, Cat Downy and Antoine Mangin

Additional information about the workshop

The aim of the workshop is to highlight (potentially with speed talks) some of the recent innovations and developments in Earth Observations (EOs) and gather user requirements and feedback from the IMBeR-wide community on their EO data needs.

Key topics that it will cover:

New satellites – updated technology means better measurements of the ocean and coastal environments, with better resolution, coverage and access. These data have applications from monitoring changes in Earth’s climate to tracking marine pollution.

New tools - one of the priority research questions IMBeR asks is, "How can IMBeR contribute to the synthesis and integration of global datasets and link these to ecosystem modelling?" As the diversity and complexity of EO data available continues to increase, the need for efficient data access, information extraction, data management and processing tools are key issues for handling such large amounts of data.

New research – scientific advances in satellite research can provide solutions for sustainability problems: e.g. data analytics assess the direct optical measurement of seaborne plastic waste from satellites, or methods for enabling sustainable ocean governance beyond areas of national jurisdiction.

Integration of marine and coastal institutional regimes across multiple sectors

Conveners: Manuel Bellanger, Robby Fonner, Cameron Speir and Olivier Thébaud

Marine and coastal activities are often closely interrelated and resources spanning marine and coastal environments are also likely to span multiple jurisdictional boundaries and ecological structures, making it critical to take into account land-ocean interactions and to foster cross management agency coordination. This requires examination of how well institutional systems are designed and integrated across multiple sectors and resources to avoid inefficiencies arising from conflicting regulations and ensure that the variety of stakeholders are properly incentivized for the management system to deliver outcomes as planned. In particular, piecemeal approaches to marine and coastal management can result in governance structures with overlapping and conflicting mandates within and across resources, economic sectors, and jurisdictional boundaries.

This workshop will be an opportunity to bring together case studies from a variety of contexts (e.g. conflicts between offshore wind power and fisheries, interactions between agricultural sector and river flow impacting marine protected resources, interactions between biodiversity protection and fisheries management; …) and researchers working in different geographical areas around the world to inform and advance the development of decision-making frameworks to address cross-sectoral management issues. The focus of the workshop will be on methodological approaches that can be used to (1) understand what environmental and societal factors lead to governance conflicts; (2) design policy alternatives that align management and stakeholders incentives; (3) evaluate policy alternatives considering management tradeoffs across competing objectives. Abstracts for oral and poster presentations are invited which address these themes.

Marine transboundary planning, combining conservation with conflict resolution

Conveners: Peter Mackelworth and Jungho Nam

There are many examples of marine boundaries contested between adjacent states. Most political boundaries do not coincide with ecological boundaries and the connective nature of the marine environment further complicates this situation. With increasing recognition of the role of the sea for natural resources, new forms of power and shipping routes, conflicts between states are increasing. While there are areas where conflict is increasing to the detriment of the marine environment, such as the Spratly Islands, in other areas strategies based around collaboration over the marine environment are aiding conflict resolution. This workshop will look at the potential for the development of coordinated conservation across international marine borders. It will explore the conditions for the development of successful transboundary conservation through a series of case studies. It will seek to analyse the influence of international law, soft law and the role of non-governmental actors in affecting the development of transboundary marine conservation. In addition, it will consider the role of conservation as a means to facilitate other objectives, such as conflict resolution.

The workshop will be divided into three sessions. The morning session will bring together a number of case studies from varying contextual situations to examine the underlying reasons for their success or failure. Effort will be made to bring case studies from a wide range of jurisdictions, including territorial seas, continental shelves, exclusive economic zones and areas beyond national jurisdiction. Included in this session will be a presentation of the Spratly Island case study.

The second session, will aim to take best practice and apply it to one case study of particular prominence, the Korean West Sea Maritime Peace Zone (MPZ). Originally developed in 2003 by the Korea Maritime Institute it was the first attempt in the Republic of Korea (ROK) to adopt the marine peace park approach to reconcile conflicts in the transboundary coastal and marine area. Until early 2018, the MPZ was shelved until the government of the ROK changed and adopted a more conciliatory approach to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The final section, will assess the potential for developing a framework for wider international cooperation from the results of these marine transboundary conservation initiatives. The ultimate aim with be to formulate guidelines for a framework for conservation conflict resolution and the role of conservation.

The conveners aim to invite researchers from both the ROK and the DPRK, both of which are able to travel to France to discuss the MPZ. In addition, the convenors will invite specialists, in cooperation with the Horizon 2020 MarCons COST networking action, and researchers studying the Spratly Islands case study. In total, up to five other case studies will be included as well as the Spratly Islands and Korean Maritime Peace Zone cases, and the workshop is open for abstract submissions. 

Natural analogues of an Arctic in rapid transition (AnalogueART); Using natural analogues to investigate the effects of climate change and ocean acidification on northern ecosystems

Conveners: Samuel Rastrick, Jason Hall-Spencer, Kumiko Azetsu-Scott, Melissa Chierici and Naomi Harada

Northern oceans are in a state of rapid transition. The polar ocean is experiencing one of the most rapid shifts in biogeographic boundaries on the planet due to rapid warming, resulting in polar and tundra ice melt, and coupled with ocean acidification (OA) - that affect the ecology of marine organisms. Still, our knowledge on the likely effects of climate change and acidification on northern ocean chemistry and ecosystems is inadequate. As it is based mainly on limited oceanographic observations and single-species, rapid perturbation experiments on isolated elements of the ecosystem that focus on a limited number of carbonate chemistry drivers. It is difficult to extrapolate from such studies to larger scales, as these are generally too short-term to reveal how organisms may adapt/acclimatise, have often set steady pCO2 levels (which are unrealistic), and use organisms that are separated from their natural suite of food, competitors, predators, and facilitators.

Natural analogues to OA, such as CO2 vents, have been used to further our knowledge on the sensitivity of biological systems to this global change driver. Thus, assessing the capacity of different tropical and temperate species to show long-term acclimatisation and adaptation to elevated levels of pCO2. Natural analogues have also provided the means to scale-up from single-species responses to community and ecosystem level responses. A range of Arctic and sub-Arctic sites, including CO2 vents, methane cold seeps, estuaries, up-welling areas and polar fronts, that encompass gradients of pH, carbonate saturation state and alkalinity, are suggested for future high latitude, in-situ ocean acidification research. This workshop will examine how monitoring the chemical oceanography combined with observational and experimental (in situ and laboratory) studies of organisms around these natural analogues can be used to attain more accurate predictions of the impacts of OA and climate change on high latitude species and ecosystems.

Consequently, this workshop aims to provide a platform for collaboration between international experts with complementary experience in 1) monitoring carbonate chemistry across spatial and temporal gradients at high latitudes, 2) using natural analogues (including temperate and tropical systems) to assess the effects of predicted OA at different levels of biological organisation and 3) the effect of elevated pCO2 and low carbonate saturation on high latitude species. We invite applications for poster and oral presentations of studies that have used natural analogues to investigate the biological effects of OA and related carbonate chemistry drivers, particularly those where the methods could be applied to Arctic and Sub-Arctic systems. We also invite presentations on all aspects of the effects of OA and climate change in northern ecosystems, principally, studies assessing natural spatial and temporal fluctuations in carbonate chemistry, the ecological and physiological effects of these fluctuations, and investigations using natural analogues of future climate change in Arctic waters.

This workshop is convened by the IMBeR regional programme Ecosystem Studies of Subarctic and Arctic Seas (ESSAS) working group Natural analogues of an Arctic in rapid transition (AnalogueART).

Setting priorities for research into Changing Ocean Biological Systems

Conveners: Philip Boyd, Sinead Collins, Marion Gehlen, Jon Havenhand and David Hutchins

The workshop will commence with several plenary talks to stimulate discussion. We also invite participants to offer short informal presentations on what the state-of-the-art is in the research theme of Ocean Global Change Biology. For example, what are the rate limiting steps for modellers that are preventing further advances in this field? What are the next steps for experimentalists investigating physiological, ecological and evolutionary aspects of this broad topic? And are these communities effectively sharing ideas and their findings. At a broader scale, can we better link the research being conducted by international programmes, and how can the cumulative weight of these activities help to set future research priorities?

Southern Ocean ecosystems: a workshop on the marine ecosystem assessment for the region (MEASO) and its general application

Conveners: Andrew Constable, Rachel Cavanagh, Stuart Corney, Eileen Hofmann, Nadine Johnston, Jess Melbourne-Thomas, Eugene Murphy, Andrea Piñones and Rowan Trebilco

A first Marine Ecosystem Assessment for the Southern Ocean (MEASO) is under development to facilitate contributions from the Antarctic and Southern Ocean marine science community to the 6th Assessment Review (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources and other recent initiatives to assess status and trends in global ocean Ecosystems. The MEASO, which is supported by and coordinated with the IMBeR regional programme Integrated Climate and Ecosystem Dynamics (ICED) and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), is intended to complement specific scientific requirements for annual management needs with long-term assessments. The MEASO is intended to provide a forward-looking assessment of what trends in Southern Ocean ecosystems are occurring now and likely to occur into the future, along with research and management needs for the future. The aim is to have a quantitative assessment that enables managers to achieve consensus in adapting their management strategies to ecosystem change so that objectives for sustainable ecosystems can be achieved.

The first MEASO international conference, held in Hobart, Tasmania, in April 2018, provided a venue to share relevant science, enhance community input into the design and planning of the MEASO and develop an initial work plan. The aim is to publish the first MEASO in 2019, for use in the IPCC AR6, then for work to commence toward subsequent MEASO iterations on a cycle that aligns with IPCC reporting (i.e. an updated MEASO, say, every 6 years).

This workshop will explore and discuss (i) the merits of different methods for assessing the status and trends of ecosystems, (ii) the respective utilities of the results for making management decisions on mitigating or adapting to prognoses of change, and (iii) how best to communicate the results to end-users. Natural and social scientists are encouraged to attend to input their ideas for the general application of ecosystem assessment methods for the global oceans. Reading materials will be made available prior to the workshop.

The workshop is linked to the oral session “Managing the effects of change on Southern Ocean ecosystems: Understanding, challenges, and solutions.”

Time-varying ecological geography of the global ocean

Conveners: Siv Lauvset and Nadine Goris

Terrestrial ecosystems are categorized into biomes, which are regions of comparable climate and dominant plant types. For the oceans, a similar categorization into biomes is more challenging due to the movement of water masses and the more distributed trophic food web. Several concepts of partitioning the global oceans have been proposed such as Large Marine Ecosystems, Marine Ecoregions of the World, Biogeochemical Provinces and open ocean biomes. This workshop focusses on ecological divisions of the ocean, including methodology on how to best define such divisions. Strong emphasis will be placed on temporal variations on seasonal, annual, and decadal time scales and how these affect both the environmental conditions defining the ecological divisions and the trophic food webs within the divisions. With ongoing climate change, it is expected that the ecological divisions might change in size, distribution, and/or location. We welcome abstracts about the impact of climate change on ecological divisions and associated changes in trophic food webs and overall ecosystem functioning.

Using data hubs to advance knowledge and improve our understanding of biodiversity state and dynamics

Conveners: Yvan Le Bras, Bénédicte Madon and Claire Bissery

Appropriate data management and data analysis practices are essential to deal with the need for accessibility and reproducibility in ecological science. This is particularly the case to successfully extract information from raw data from around the world, to produce/identify indicators to evaluate the state of biodiversity. There is also a need to link practitioners with scientists and policy experts as well as citizens. To address these challenges, it is crucial to facilitate access to data, metadata, publications, and open source tools. The purpose of this workshop is to exchange information about data and metadata management, as well as data analysis tools and practices. Through oral presentations and a panel discussion, the workshop will focus on examples from initiatives related to French Biodiversity Research infrastructures as marine system domains.

Visioning Global Ocean Futures

Conveners: Carolyn Lundquist, Kate Davies, Karen Fisher, Beth Fulton, Alison Greenaway, and Ingrid van Putten

Scenarios are powerful tools to envision how different pathways of development and stakeholder decisions might impact nature and its contributions to people. While frequently used in economic planning and climate change contexts, scenario use is in its infancy in environmental planning and decision making for ocean management. Current scenarios (i.e., Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs)) treat nature as endpoints of socio-economic development pathways and neglect the central role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in underpinning human development. However, humanity and nature are intertwined, as reflected in the linkages between targets for human well-being and nature conservation in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Internationally, the use of top down scenarios as drivers of potential environmental futures is evolving, through scenario developments that are reframing the environmental scenarios landscape to better integrate with participatory decision making, diverse values and knowledge systems, cross-scale interactions, and social-ecological feedbacks between the state of the environment and human well-being.

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has initiated the development of multiscale scenarios for Nature Futures based on positive visions for human relationships with nature, and a preliminary Nature Futures Framework will be presented at this workshop. This framework and its associated scenarios are envisaged to shift the traditional ways of forecasting impacts of society on nature toward nature-centred visions and pathways that will integrate interlinkages of social-ecological systems across biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services, and human well-being. An initial set of visions was developed at an international participatory visioning workshop in September 2017, including one vision specific to Oceans. These visions were used to develop the preliminary Nature Futures Framework at a further workshop in June 2018. At this workshop, participants will explore how the Nature Futures Framework resonates for the Oceans, contributing to iterative cycles of visioning, stakeholder co-creation, and modelling at global, regional and local scales that are supported by the IPBES Scenarios and Models Expert Group. Participants will enrich, complement and fill the remaining gaps in the framework, and explore the suitability of the framework to integrate with existing predictive modelling, and to explore consequences of alternative policy and management options in nature conservation and sustainable development for both national EEZ and high seas management. This workshop will also integrate learnings from cumulative effects scenarios, recognising that nationally and internationally, coastal and ocean management is typically fragmented across statutes, management agencies and geographies, challenging the ability to account for cumulative effects. The workshop is designed to illuminate shared learnings, barriers, and pathways to address ocean management that extend across EEZs, and enable long term protection, integrity and use of coastal and marine environments.