125 research outputs found

    Strengthening Europe's Capability in Biological Ocean Observations

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    This publication is primarily aimed at stakeholders involved in ocean observing, spanning diverse roles from commissioning, managing, funding and coordinating, to developing, implementing, or advising on, ocean observation programmes. Such programmes will have strategic and policy drivers but their main purpose may vary from predominantly researchdriven scientific purposes to environmental monitoring for providing data and reporting to legally-binding regulations or directives. The main focus is on European capabilities but set in a global context with the various actors spanning a variety of geographical scales from national to regional and European. Key stakeholder organizations include environmental or other agencies; marine research institutions, their researchers and operators; international and regional ocean observing initiatives and programmes; national, regional and European policy makers and their advisors; national stations for observations; etc.). It will also be of interest to the wider marine and maritime research and policy community. The main aim of the publication is to increase the relevance of current (and future) European biological ocean observation capacity to strengthen global efforts towards our understanding of the ocean and enhance marine biodiversity conservation, for maintaining a healthy ocean for healthy societies. This document explains why biological ocean observations are needed to assess progress against national and international conservation targets, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Blue Growth agenda and to contribute to key EU directives including the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). To achieve this, the publication highlights the need of biological ocean observations to reflect clearly defined hypotheses about potential causes of change, including the combined impacts of local and global drivers, and to support the management of our impacts on the ocean. Additionally, it calls for flexible biological ocean observing programmes to capture the relevant drivers operating at multiple spatial scales, by networking and integration of ongoing monitoring programmes, methodological standardization and appropriate policies of data integration and dissemination. It then presents key variables, elements and information products to inform on the status and trends of marine biodiversity

    “Time: A Kaleidoscopic Image of Bermuda’s Sacred Financial Phenomenon and the Wealth of Social-Environmental Diversity”

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    Michelle’s thesis explores the extent to which a researcher could contribute to change by engaging leaders in conversations that might intensify commitment to or the direction of their actions around socio-environmental decline in Bermuda as a country historically organised in the tradition of an entrepreneurial for-profit enterprise. The framing of a space to reflect on highlighted the significance of time that led to the bricolage design of a heuristic device called a moon gate. Time, the keystone of the moon gate, created a prism lighting up the twists and turns of kaleidoscopic images of the chaos of the markets and the creative diversity of human and nonhuman participants. She undertook a philosophical approach with her study of the contested space of time around sensitivity to maintaining a fulcrum point based on the wellbeing of people and planet

    Assessing the conservation value of wetlands and waterbirds with a focus on the winter rainfall region of South Africa

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    Includes bibliographical references.This thesis deals with the development and application of a new tool to assess the conservation significance of wetland avifauna. Termed the Waterbird Conservation Value (WCV) score, this method sums the proportion of each species' count relative to the global 1% threshold level for each species; the value obtained measures the overall conservation importance of the wetland to waterbirds

    Deep learning for the early detection of harmful algal blooms and improving water quality monitoring

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    Climate change will affect how water sources are managed and monitored. The frequency of algal blooms will increase with climate change as it presents favourable conditions for the reproduction of phytoplankton. During monitoring, possible sensory failures in monitoring systems result in partially filled data which may affect critical systems. Therefore, imputation becomes necessary to decrease error and increase data quality. This work investigates two issues in water quality data analysis: improving data quality and anomaly detection. It consists of three main topics: data imputation, early algal bloom detection using in-situ data and early algal bloom detection using multiple modalities.The data imputation problem is addressed by experimenting with various methods with a water quality dataset that includes four locations around the North Sea and the Irish Sea with different characteristics and high miss rates, testing model generalisability. A novel neural network architecture with self-attention is proposed in which imputation is done in a single pass, reducing execution time. The self-attention components increase the interpretability of the imputation process at each stage of the network, providing knowledge to domain experts.After data curation, algal activity is predicted using transformer networks, between 1 to 7 days ahead, and the importance of the input with regard to the output of the prediction model is explained using SHAP, aiming to explain model behaviour to domain experts which is overlooked in previous approaches. The prediction model improves bloom detection performance by 5% on average and the explanation summarizes the complex structure of the model to input-output relationships. Performance improvements on the initial unimodal bloom detection model are made by incorporating multiple modalities into the detection process which were only used for validation purposes previously. The problem of missing data is also tackled by using coordinated representations, replacing low quality in-situ data with satellite data and vice versa, instead of imputation which may result in biased results

    Strengthening Europe’s capability in biological ocean observations

    Get PDF
    This publication is primarily aimed at stakeholders involved in ocean observing, spanning diverse roles from commissioning, managing, funding and coordinating, to developing, implementing, or advising on, ocean observation programmes. Such programmes will have strategic and policy drivers but their main purpose may vary from predominantly researchdriven scientific purposes to environmental monitoring for providing data and reporting to legally-binding regulations or directives. The main focus is on European capabilities but set in a global context with the various actors spanning a variety of geographical scales from national to regional and European. Key stakeholder organizations include environmental or other agencies; marine research institutions, their researchers and operators; international and regional ocean observing initiatives and programmes; national, regional and European policy makers and their advisors; national stations for observations; etc.). It will also be of interest to the wider marine and maritime research and policy community. The main aim of the publication is to increase the relevance of current (and future) European biological ocean observation capacity to strengthen global efforts towards our understanding of the ocean and enhance marine biodiversity conservation, for maintaining a healthy ocean for healthy societies. This document explains why biological ocean observations are needed to assess progress against national and international conservation targets, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Blue Growth agenda and to contribute to key EU directives including the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). To achieve this, the publication highlights the need of biological ocean observations to reflect clearly defined hypotheses about potential causes of change, including the combined impacts of local and global drivers, and to support the management of our impacts on the ocean. Additionally, it calls for flexible biological ocean observing programmes to capture the relevant drivers operating at multiple spatial scales, by networking and integration of ongoing monitoring programmes, methodological standardization and appropriate policies of data integration and dissemination. It then presents key variables, elements and information products to inform on the status and trends of marine biodiversity. The Future Science Brief finishes by recommending priorities for enhancing relevant and integrated current biological ocean observing capacity in Europe

    The African Marine Litter Outlook

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    This open access book provides a cross-sectoral, multi-scale assessment of marine litter in Africa with a focus on plastics. From distribution, to impacts on environmental and human health, this book looks at what is known scientifically. It includes a policy analysis of the instruments that currently exist, and what is needed to help Africa tackle marine litter—including local and transboundary sources. Across 5 chapters, experts from Africa and beyond have put together a summary of the scientific knowledge currently known about marine litter in Africa. The context of the African continent and future projections form a backdrop on which the scientific knowledge is built. This scientific knowledge incorporates quantities, distributions, and pathways of litter into the marine environment, highlighting where the impacts of marine litter are most felt in Africa. These impacts have widespread effects, with ecological, social, economic, and human health repercussions. While containing detailed scientific information, this book provides a sound knowledge base for policymakers, NGOs and the broader public

    Antarcticness: Inspirations and imaginaries

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    Antarcticness joins disciplines, communication approaches and ideas to explore meanings and depictions of Antarctica. Personal and professional words in poetry and prose, plus images, present and represent Antarctica, as presumed and as imagined, alongside what is experienced around the continent and by those watching from afar. These understandings explain how the Antarctic is viewed and managed while identifying aspects which should be more prominent in policy and practice. The authors and artists place Antarctica, and the perceptions and knowledge through Antarcticness, within inspirations and imaginations, without losing sight of the multiple interests pushing the continent’s governance as it goes through rapid political and environmental changes. Given the diversity and disparity of the influences and changes, the book’s contributions connect to provide a more coherent and encompassing perspective of how society views Antarctica, scientifically and artistically, and what the continent provides and could provide politically, culturally and environmentally. Offering original research, art and interpretations of different experiences and explorations of Antarctica, explanations meld with narratives while academic analyses overlap with first-hand experiences of what Antarctica does and does not – could and could not – bring to the world

    The African Marine Litter Outlook

    Get PDF
    This open access book provides a cross-sectoral, multi-scale assessment of marine litter in Africa with a focus on plastics. From distribution, to impacts on environmental and human health, this book looks at what is known scientifically. It includes a policy analysis of the instruments that currently exist, and what is needed to help Africa tackle marine litter—including local and transboundary sources. Across 5 chapters, experts from Africa and beyond have put together a summary of the scientific knowledge currently known about marine litter in Africa. The context of the African continent and future projections form a backdrop on which the scientific knowledge is built. This scientific knowledge incorporates quantities, distributions, and pathways of litter into the marine environment, highlighting where the impacts of marine litter are most felt in Africa. These impacts have widespread effects, with ecological, social, economic, and human health repercussions. While containing detailed scientific information, this book provides a sound knowledge base for policymakers, NGOs and the broader public
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