National marine spatial plans guide Swedish management and use of the sea. The plans should contribute to achieving Good Ecological Status and national environmental goals that are integrated with economic and social goals. Marine spatial planning must be based on an ecosystem approach, but an important component of ecosystem-based management is still lacking: accounting for species interactions and their consequences.
We therefore study how coastal food webs are affected by local management actions and climate change – accounting for the dynamic consequences of species interactions – and integrate their responses in a new risk analysis method that can be combined with current tools for marine spatial planning. The new method will make it possible to identify how to adapt coastal- and marine planning to climate change in order to reduce the loss of resilience in Baltic Sea coastal ecosystems.
Our goal with the project
We aim to develop a method for ecological risk analyses that (i) builds on how interactions among species govern how they respond to management actions under climate change, and (ii) can be combined with current approaches for marine spatial planning.
ClimePlan will also provide new knowledge of how climate warming can alter the ecological risks entailed in local management actions in coastal ecosystems. The new knowledge and risk analysis method can contribute to improved impact analyses of coastal- and marine spatial plans. We thereby aim to support the development of climate adaptation of coastal municipalities’ planning and in the longer term, national marine spatial planning.
News in the project
We are recruiting! A postdoctoral position will soon open, focused on coastal food web modelling to analyze impacts of climate and local management scenarios.
What do we do in the project?
We are developing ecological risk analysis tables (ERATs) in case studies along the Swedish Baltic Sea coast. In each area, we analyze the development of coastal fish communities to identify key species interactions governing community responses to environmental and human-induced pressures. Based on these results, we develop local temperature-dependent dynamic food web models of coastal fish communities accounting for key pressures on the communities. Using model simulations and scenario analyses we then study how local management actions and climate change affect the coastal food webs, their resilience, and key ecosystem functions such as fish production. Risks to key ecosystem functions and ecosystem services in different scenarios are synthesized in ERATs. Thereby local management actions can be ranked according to their consequences under climate change, and combined with maps of local pressures.
We will test the application of the ERAT approach for ecosystem-based marine planning in practice, in a “Living Lab”, together with county board experts responsible for impact assessments of coastal- and marine spatial plans, and from the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management. This new approach will enable impact assessment and evaluations of local marine spatial planning that can account for the dynamic consequences of species interactions and community responses to management actions, facing climate change.
