Ecosystem Resilience
Supporting UK policies to reverse the global decline in biodiversity by assessing the health of ecosystems and the measures required to conserve and recover them.
We live in a time of rapid global environmental change that threatens natural ecosystems and societal well-being. Aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem services have been diminished and continue to be threatened by human activities and climate change. Actions that reverse this decline but also accommodate human needs are needed. To choose between different management and conservation actions, our society needs robust scientific evidence on how species, habitats and ecosystems respond to change and interventions, and the impacts of these actions on society. In this way, we can help ensure that conservation efforts can be focussed on the activities that are the most effective, and that opportunities for society to benefit from ecosystem services are maximised.
The goal of the Ecosystem Resilience theme is to develop a coherent and focussed science capability that generates integrated and actionable evidence for the protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems, and which our partners in government and wider society are confident to call on to address topical and strategic biodiversity issues. Our primary focus will be to serve the purpose of the UKs Environment Act and the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) in protecting and restoring biodiversity at home and internationally. In achieving our goal, we will help drive transformative change to improve the natural aquatic environment, and achieve a sustainable and restorative future for rivers, seas and the ocean.
To achieve this, we:
Bring together, augment, and focus Cefas expertise and capability in biodiversity and conservation science, and identify conservation challenges that Cefas can help with.
Develop methods (including AI and machine learning) that synthesise information on species and ecosystem biodiversity, processes and function, and to integrate this with information from economic and societal systems.
Define and provide metrics and analyses that define current and future ecosystem states and responses to pressures and interventions.
Develop and support decision-support tools that enable benefits and trade-offs to be communicated to all stakeholders.
Improve the effectiveness of our collaborations with partners in Government (e.g. JNCC, NE, MMO) and more widely across stakeholder groups (NGOs, fisheries organisations).
Communicate our science and evidence as easy to understand scientific advice to government and wider society in support of effective marine management and conservation policies.
