Ecosystem Change in the North Sea: Processes, Drivers, Future Scenarios
(ECODRIVE)
ECODRIVE utilizes the international expertise of climatologists, modellers, planktologists,
fisheries experts and ecophysiologists contained in a consortium of partners from Germany,
Norway, the UK and the Netherlands to assess, model and further the predictive
understanding of changes in the trophodynamic structure and function within the North Sea
relative to the different drivers of ecosystem change. Drivers include those acting via climate
change and variability as well as those acting more regionally via anthropogenic forcing (e.g.,
fisheries exploitation, eutrophication) to impact species diversity and trophodynamic structure
and function (i.e., functional biodiversity). The approach includes available long-term time
series data on all trophic levels (from phytoplankton to fish), climate indices, as well as
modelled (climate-forced) estimates of abiotic and biotic factors. The results from the
combination of (i) retrospective investigations using long-term time series of biotic and
abiotic variables stretching back for 40-100 years, (ii) field studies to obtain indispensable
information on trophic links of new key species and (iii) a suite of climate, hydrodynamic and
ecosystem models will allow to develop future scenarios. The focus will be on the pelagic
realm as groups of pelagic organisms such as phyto-, zooplankton and small pelagic fishes
react rapidly and often dramatically to external ecosystem drivers and play an important role
as indicator species. ECODRIVE research will 1) concentrate on fluxes of organisms and
nutrients into the North Sea and will contrast advection through the Channel versus transport
into the region from the northern boundary (spatial analyses), 2) disentangle the contribution
of inter-annual to multi-decadal forcing patterns to observed differences in the periodicity
(temporal analyses) of changes in species abundance and composition in the study region and,
in this manner, 3) understand the drivers of ecosystem change at a variety of spatial and
temporal scales and 4) enable forecast (scenario test) future North Sea trophodynamic
structure and function based upon different IPCC (climate) and anthropogenic
(eutrophication, resource exploitation) scenarios. Whereas earlier studies usually focused on
the period from 1970-2000, ECODRIVE will give particular emphasis to a wider time
window including the two warm water periods from 1930-1960 and the recent one which
exhibit many similarities such as the occurrence of warm water species.
ECODRIVE is designed to (i) provide a better understanding of potential climate change
impacts (scenarios), (ii) construct usable climate change indicators, and (iii) improve the
interface between science and policy formulation in terms of risk management as suggested
by the European Science Foundation. Researchers from four riparian North Sea countries
selected for their different expertises will closely cooperate with each other to achieve the
goals.
Project Coordinator:
Jürgen Alheit, Institue for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Warnemünde. Germany.
juergen.alheit@iowarnemuende.de
Project Partners:
Morten Dahlberg Skogen, institute for Marin Research, Bergen, Norway. morten@imr.no
Thomas Pohlmann, Institute of Oceanography, Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany.
thomas.pohlmann@zmaw.de
Corinna Schrum, Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
corinna.schrum@gfi.uib.no
Axel Temming, Institute for Hydrobiology and Fishery Science, Hamburg University,
Hamburg, Germany. atemming@uni-hamburg.de
Maarten Boersma, Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven,
Germany. maarten.boersma@awi.de
Mark Dickey-Collas, Wageningen IMARES, IJmuiden. The Netherlands.
mark.dickeycollas@wur.nl
Daniela Jacob, Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg. Germany.
daniela.jacob@zmaw.de