What is it about?
This paper presents the State of the art modelling for the Black Sea ecosystem. This model is the first attempt to represent the historical and current state of the Black Sea ecosystem spatially and temporally, serving as a reference baseline for evaluating policy scenarios and assisting policy makers in the evaluation of potential environmental impacts of management options.
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Why is it important?
Since the 1960s, the Black Sea has undergone a series of transformations driven by numerous anthropogenic stressors. The current military aggression happening in Ukraine, which impacts coastal and marine ecosystems of the region, for example via chemical/noise pollution, habitats damage (from shelling and fortifications), and limitation of conservation activities, necessitates even more the need of a temporal and spatial assessment tool enable to evaluate the single and cumulative impacts of these pressures.
Perspectives
This new model and its findings constitute the reference baseline (defined as the past and current status) for the Black Sea ecosystem. The model well represent the overall temporal declining trends of the main fishery target species and offers the first attempt on representing species spatial patterns within an ecosystem-food-web framework. The model will be used for testing policy management scenarios set out by EU legislation, for example, applying fishing measures coming from the Common Fisheries Policy and the GFCM; and restoration/conservation measures following the recent Nature Restoration Law, the Biodiversity Strategy, and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
Natalia Serpetti
Joint Research Centre - European Commission
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: State of the art modelling for the Black Sea ecosystem to support European policies, PLOS One, January 2025, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312170.
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