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Abstract: Recent studies have provided compelling evidence for an accelerated anthropogenic impact on coastal systems, resulting in intense inputs of materials and nutrients from the continent. This has led scientists and policymakers to encourage the implementation of monitoring programmes, which have resulted in the multiplicity of datasets. However surprisingly, only a few attempts have been made to couple observations with statistical and mathematical tools to detect, as soon as the data become available perturbations in coastal systems. Here, we propose new mathematical procedures to evaluate the state of a system, based on the building of relative reference state and indicators of nutrient over-enrichment. The techniques were tested in some French coastal systems using data from the programme SOMLIT. Applied to this dataset, the multivariate procedures rapidly identified and evaluated anthropogenic nutrient anomalies from the continent on three sites (Wimereux, Roscoff and Villefranche-sur-Mer) from 1997 onwards. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents a study which looked at the at-sea distribution of foraging little auks across the Greenland Sea in order to understand the impact of climate change on Arctic marine food webs. The researchers stated the possibility that foraging little auks would be found in greatest abundance in cold Arctic waters bearing more lipid-rich prey and that would allow them to deliver more energy-rich food to their chicks. They used a coupled atmosphere-ocean global climate model (AOGCM) in order to assess potential future impacts of ocean warming. A total of 27 complete chick meal samples were collected in Greenland between the period July 25-August 7 and 33 in Hornsund.

The article discusses research on the changes that are driven by the climate in coastal marine systems of western Europe. It references a study by Eric Goberville at the Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences in Wimereux, France, and his colleagues, published in the June 3, 2010 issue of "Marine Ecology Progress Series." The researchers studied year-to-year changes in coastal systems and the potential influence of climate changes on coastal systems. They conclude that climate significantly affects western Europe's coastal systems, which is shown by the strong correlations between the changes seen in the coastal environment and the regional climate.

Recent strategies to sustain fish stocks have suggested a move towards an ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM) approach. While EBFM considers the effect of fishing at the ecosystem level, it generally struggles with climate-driven environmental variability. In this study we show that the position of a fish stock within its distributional range or thermal niche (we use Icelandic and North Sea cod as examples of stocks at the centre and edge at their niche, respectively) will influence the relative importance of fishing and climate on abundance. At the warmer edge of the thermal niche of cod in the North Sea, we show a prominent influence of climate on the cod stock that is mediated through temperature effects on the plankton. In contrast, the influence of climate through its effects on plankton appears much less important at the present centre of the niche around Iceland. Recognising the potentially strong effect of climate on fish stocks, at a time of rapid global climate change, is probably an important prerequisite towards the synthesis of a cod management strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are useful tools to project potential future species distributions under climate change scenarios. Despite the ability to run SDMs in recent and reliable tools, there are some misuses and proxies that are widely practiced and rarely addressed together, particularly when dealing with marine species. In this paper, we propose an open-source framework that includes (i) a procedure for homogenizing occurrence data to reduce the influence of sampling bias, (ii) a procedure for generating pseudo-absences, (iii) a hierarchical-filter approach, (iv) full incorporation of the third dimension by considering climatic variables at multiple depths and (v) building of maps that predict current and potential future ranges of marine species. This framework is available for non-modeller ecologists interested in investigating future species ranges with a user-friendly script. We investigated the robustness of the framework by applying it to marine species of the Eastern English Channel. Projections were built for the middle and the end of this century under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios. • A new habitat modelling open-source framework for non-modeller ecologists. • An explicit consideration of the third dimension and habitat filter in the modelling procedure. • An automated procedure for data processing. • The proposed framework avoids higher projections of species loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]