CERES

Title: Climate change and European aquatic RESources

Summary: CERES advances a cause-and-effect understanding of how future climate change will influence Europe’s most important fish and shellfish populations, their habitats, and the economic activities dependent on these species. CERES will involve and closely cooperate with industry and policy stakeholders to define policy, environment, social, technological, law and environmental climate change scenarios to be tested.

This four-year project will:

• Provide regionally relevant short-, medium- and long-term future, high resolution projections of key environmental variables for European marine and freshwater ecosystems;
• Integrate the resulting knowledge on changes in productivity, biology and ecology of wild and cultured animals (including key indirect / food web interactions), and ‘scale up’ to consequences for shellfish and fish populations, assemblages as well as their ecosystems and economic sectors;
• Utilize innovative risk-assessment methodologies that encompass drivers of change, threats to fishery and aquaculture resources, expert knowledge, barriers to adaptation and likely consequences if mitigation measures are not put in place;
• Anticipate responses and assist in the adaptation of aquatic food production industries to underlying biophysical changes, including developing new operating procedures, early warning methods, infrastructures, location choice, and markets;
• Create short-, medium- and long-term projections tools for the industry fisheries as well as policy makers to more effectively promote blue growth of aquaculture and fisheries in different regions;
• Consider market-level responses to changes (both positive and negative) in commodity availability as a result of climate change;
• Formulate viable autonomous adaptation strategies within the industries and for policy to circumvent/prevent perceived risks or to access future opportunities;
• Effectively communicate these findings and tools to potential end-users and relevant stakeholders.

For more information, please visit EurOcean Knowledge Gate.