Q-MARE - Disentangling climate and pre-industrial human impacts on marine ecosystems
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Synthesis |
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Jan 2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
Jan 2025 |
Mediterranean coast of Israel. The sea bottom holds both living and dead shells and other skeletal remains of organisms living in the area during the last thousands of years (photo courtesy of Paolo G. Albano).
Climate and human activities altered marine ecosystems for thousands of years before industrialization, changing the composition, structure and dynamics of marine communities and the distribution, ecology and physiology of marine organisms. However, disentangling human impacts from those of natural climate variability remains a challenge. Marine ecosystems have proven robust to natural climatic perturbations, but are less resilient to anthropogenic impacts. Moreover, the timing, rate, and intensity of anthropogenic impacts on marine ecosystems before and after the industrial revolution varied across the world, increasing and confounding the effect of the shifting baselines syndrome. Q-MARE brings together scientists from different disciplines to disentangle past climate and human-induced changes and explore the timing and scale of human impacts on Quaternary marine ecosystems by combining paleontological, paleoclimatic, archaeological, and historical data.
This group is open to anyone who is interested, and early-career researchers are encouraged to be involved.
> Sign up to the Q-MARE mailing list (Note: you must be signed in via the eduroam network to join the mailing list - read more about PAGES working group mailing lists here)
> Contact a member of the Steering Committee
> Follow the group on Twitter
This WG will produce new results on biodiversity loss under natural climate variability and the sustainability of both ecosystems and societies under the low CO2 emission levels of the pre-industrial world. Moreover, we will provide guidelines for the integration of observation data and proxy-based reconstructions with dynamic ecosystem models.
Climate and human activities altered marine ecosystems for thousands of years before industrialization, changing the composition, structure and dynamics of marine communities and the distribution, ecology and physiology of marine organisms. Research on different aspects of Quaternary marine ecosystems has recently increased with several concurrently running projects targeting different regions, such as 4-OCEANS, PALEOWEB, TRADITION, and MERMAID.
Marine ecosystems have proven robust to natural climatic perturbations (Kowalewski et al. 2015, Agiadi et al. 2018), but are less resilient to anthropogenic impacts (Erlandson & Rick 2010, Lotze et al. 2011, Martinelli et al. 2017, Hambrecht et al. 2019, Fossile et al. 2020). Moreover, the timing, rate, and intensity of anthropogenic impacts on marine ecosystems before (Jackson 2001, Lotze et al. 2006, Holm et al 2021) and after the industrial revolution varied across the world (Yasuhara et al. 2020), increasing and confounding the effect of the shifting baselines syndrome (Soga & Gaston 2018).
Q-MARE will bring together scientists from different disciplines to disentangle past climate and human-induced changes, which was beyond the scope of previous projects, and explore the timing and scale of human impacts on Quaternary marine ecosystems by combining paleontological, paleoclimatic, archaeological, and historical data.
Meetings
Year 1
- Q-MARE kick-off meeting: Climate and pre-industrial human impacts on marine ecosystems: crossing disciplinary boundaries
17–19 January 2022, online
Organizers: Konstantina Agiadi, Bryony Caswell, Paolo G Albano and Martin Zuschin
> Calendar - Workshop on Quaternary marine ecosystems: climate versus human impacts in the pre-industrial era, online, 5-7 December 2022
Organizers: Maria Bas, Andre Colonese, Tatiana Theodoropoulou, Bryony Cashwell and Konstantina Agiadi
> Calendar
> Watch recording of Dr. Anne Salomon
> Watch recording of Dr. Heike K. Lotze
Year 2
- Workshop on Pre-industrial humans, climates and marine ecosystems in education and research, online, 23-27 January 2023
> Q-MARE workshop: Pre-industrial humans, climates and marine ecosystems in education and research - Stakeholder engagement meeting: "Geohistorical perspectives on functional connectivity patterns" in Sesimbra, Portugal, from 22-25 May 2023, as part of the Symposium on Human Impacts on Marine Functional Connectivity co-organized by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and the COST-Action SEA-UNICORN. *Please note that there are funds available to support early-career scientists travel to participate. See the calendar entry for more information.
> Q-MARE stakeholder engagement meeting: Geohistorical perspectives on functional connectivity patterns
Year 3
- Workshop on "Detecting, describing and disentangling pre-industrial climate and human impacts on marine ecosystem", Crete (Greece), 2-6 September 2024
> Q-MARE workshop
Coordinators
Konstantina Agiadi (University of Vienna, Austria)
Bryony A. Caswell (University of Hull, UK)
Maria Bas (Instituto de Ciencias del Mar (ICM) - CSIC, Spain)
Poul Holm (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Jessica Lueders-Dumont (Princeton University, USA & Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama)
Aaron O’Dea (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama)
Andre Colonese (ICTA-Autonoma University of Barcelona)