Management implications of connectivity in marine coastal areas
Informations
- Funding country
Norway- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 1/1/2022
- End date
- 12/31/2026
- Budget
- 234,930 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| INNOFFARENA - Public innovation | Grant | - | - | 234,930 EUR |
Abstract
To maintain healthy fish populations, it is crucial to preserve important spawning areas and nursery habitats. Management of coastal areas in Norway, as well as the open ocean, are to be ecosystem based. This requires knowledge on ecological processes, dynamics, species, and interactions. Although there is various knowledge on some habitat types (such as eelgrass meadows and kelp forests) and cod spawning areas along the Norwegian Skagerrak coast, there is scarce information about interactions and connectivity. The aim of this project is to investigate how different units of coastal ecosystems connect, and how new knowledge on connectivity can transfer to applied management. Specifically, we wish to use spawning data to identify possible biodiversity spawning hotspots (i.e. areas where we find a lot of different fish eggs), and see how these might connect to nearby habitats. Further, we wish to investigate the connectivity between different habitats, and the importance of this for fish recruitment. For this, we will use data collected on annual research cruises conducted by IMR. This project is a co-operation between the County Governor of Agder, the University of Agder and the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research.