Monitoring, citizen science and adaptation plans, along with vulnerability, complete the activities of MPA-Engage.
Researchers from Future Oceans Lab, led by Elena Ojea, together with Laura Movilla, lecturer and researcher at the Department of Public Law, are the UVigo representatives in the international Interreg project Mediterráneo Engaging Mediterranean key actors in Ecosystem Approach to manage Marine Protected Areas to face Climate change (MPA-Engage), which ends this week with a joint event in Palma and Barcelona, in which results are presented, solutions are shared and priorities are identified.
The MPA-Engage project, coordinated by the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and with the participation of 14 other European institutions, focused for 24 months on supporting and promoting the role of marine protected areas in adapting to and mitigating the climate change impacts, designing adaptation plans for the Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) of Brijuni (Croatia), Portofino (Italy), Calanques (France), Zakynthos (Greece), Karaburuni (Albania), Cap de Creus (Spain) and Tavolara Punta Coda Cavallo (Italy).
Being the first occasion in which a group from UVigo participates in an Interreg-Med project, the researchers from Vigo were in charge of assessing the socio-ecological vulnerability of the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), working directly with their managers, to whom they provided a new tool to know the vulnerability of their respective protected areas to climate change.
Vulnerability of species, habitats and users of protected areas
In addition to demonstrating that the vulnerability of a protected area has to be understood from both an ecological and social point of view, the UVigo researchers concluded after months of work that this type of analysis is applicable to all protected areas, adapting to the amount of data and information available.
This research also confirmed the high vulnerability to climate change in all areas of species such as Pinna nobilis, Paramuricea clavata, Corallium rubrum, Eunicella cavolini, Cladocora caespitosa and Savaglia savagli.
A Mediterranean that is warming three times faster than the rest of the oceans
In terms of the general conclusions of the MPA-Engage project, the Mediterranean is confirmed as one of the areas most affected by climate change, warming three times faster than the rest of the oceans.
The researchers believe that the monitoring, vulnerability, citizen science and adaptation plan tools, useful for the entire network of Mediterranean MPAs, will enable the project to go beyond the project, so that the entire network of reserves will promote climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, which will increase the resilience of the sea and its activities and services.
Although MPA-Engage has come to an end and there are no plans for it to continue, Elena Ojea and Julia Ameneiro consider that “a very good working network was created that will allow us to continue collaborating and working on common objectives, such as the protection and conservation of the Mediterranean, already identified as one of the areas most affected by climate change”.
Source: DUVI
