In charge: Hamburg University - Institute for Marine Ecosystem and Fishery Science (IMF)

Work package 1 will explore the ecological vulnerability of the North Sea ecosystem and in particular of the North Sea fish community.

This overall goal will be achieved in three steps:

1. describing and understanding past and future risks of crossing tipping points for the North Sea fish community
2. assessing the vulnerability of the ecological system to external stressors
3. understanding the related availability of fisheries resources in the German exclusive economic zone (EEZ)

A range of methods, from systematic reviews to statistical modelling, will be applied. In particular, innovative statistical techniques such as the stochastic cusp model, the integrated resilience assessment and methods to detect early warning signals of change will be applied and combined to estimate vulnerability of the ecological subsystem and the proximity to tipping points. Particularly exciting will be the combination of the ecological results with the socio-cultural and the economic sub-systems, which will create strong collaborations between the different teams and will allow to estimate the vulnerability of the fully coupled socio-ecological system.

In cooperation with the other work packages, the ecological results will be combined with those from the socio-cultural and economic subsystems and thus allow assessing the vulnerability of the overall system.

Milestones

Deliverables