Assisting the development of the next generation of Operational
Ecology
24 January 2012
Coastal seas provide many beneficial goods and
services to humankind, such as fisheries, recreation, climate
regulation and coastal defences, however, these marine environments
are being disrupted by climate change and human activities. It is
important that the marine environment is observed and monitored to
provide high quality environmental information / data, understand
its role in our Earth system, track changes and predict the
potential response of the ocean to stressors.
This week a new EU science programme has been
launched that will help develop and evaluate ecosystem forecast
tools to help assess and manage the risks posed by human
activities on the marine environment, thus improving the ability to
predict the “health” of European marine ecosystems.
Co-ordinated by Plymouth Marine Laboratory,
OPEC (Operational Ecology) will use the EU’s Global Monitoring for Environment and
Security Marine Service as a framework and feed directly into
the research and development of innovative global monitoring
products or applications. This in turn will advise policies such as
the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive and Common
Fisheries Policy, as well as the continued monitoring of climate
change and assessments of mitigation and adaptation strategies.
The programme will focus on four European
regional seas (North-East Atlantic, Baltic, Mediterranean and Black
Seas) and plans to implement a prototype ecological Marine Forecast
System, which will include hydrodynamics, lower and higher trophic
levels (plankton to fish) and biological data
assimilation. 
Products and services generated by OPEC will
provide tools and information for environmental managers,
policymakers and other related industries, laying the foundations
for the next generation of operational ecological products and
identification of knowledge / data gaps.