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The goal of this deliverable is to assess availability of FAIR spatial data about human activity using global datasets, and to identify obstacles (knowledge gaps) to mapping their corresponding environmental pressures at the scale of the Atlantic Ocean basin to support ecosystem-based management. It also provides advice towards improving mapping based on machine learning/artificial intelligence (AI). WP1 & 7 identified the sectors affecting the marine environment, the pressures they create, and the ecological characteristics affected. Eighteen sectors, with 19 associated pressures that could impact 25 different ecosystem components were identified. In this deliverable, only the widely distributed sectors relevant across the whole ocean are considered: fishing, shipping, aquaculture, oil exploitation, telecommunications, scientific exploration and seabed minerals. Fishing intensity by main groups of fishing gears has been estimated by supervised classification of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. These approaches have been able to distinguish between fishing and routing activity of individual vessels, while assigning up to 7 main fishing gear types. These are aggregated here into pelagic and bottom fishing activities to match the grouping of ecosystem components in these two groups. AIS data is most useful in the high seas since in coastal areas, smaller vessels do not require AIS, except in some regions of Europe. At the Canary Current Sea CS pelagic fishing shows the highest intensities around the Canaries and Cabo Verde archipelagos and all the way from western Sahara to Guinea-Bissau. On the contrary, bottom trawling concentrates closer to the coast off the coasts of northern Morocco and from western Sahara to Guinea-Bissau. At North Mid Atlantic Ridge CS scale, AIS data shows pelagic fishing is widely distributed except in the northern part, and bottom fishing seems to be concentrated on the Islands. At South Mid Atlantic Ridge CS, scale AIS data shows a wide distribution of pelagic fishing whereas bottom fishing seems to be poorly covered. At Brazilian Shelf CS scale, bottom and pelagic fishing are widely distributed on the area. Shipping activities can be also inferred from AIS data. AIS systems reporting position through a satellite system are mandatory in all passenger ships irrespective of size, all vessels > 300 MT (gross) transiting international routes, and any cargo ship > 500 MT transiting within national waters. Global patterns reveal that highest shipping intensity is concentrated in coastal areas with narrow routes connecting Asia, Africa and Europe. Connectivity between these continents and America is broader with a medium intensity over large areas. This can be observed in the Europe connection with North America, Europe connection to South America, South Africa connection with South America and in the connection of Asia with North America and with Australia. At the Atlantic scale, the areas of highest shipping intensity are concentrated in European coastal waters. These higher intensity paths cross the southern Celtic Sea, Canary Current, and western Benguela Current case studies. The rest of the case studies also contain relatively high intensity paths, but not as extreme. The large area covered by high intensity paths in Canary Current, Benguela Current and South Brazilian Shelf case studies is noteworthy. The North Mid Atlantic has moderate intensity paths covering most of its area with two higher intensity paths crossing it. The Norwegian Sea and the South Mid Atlantic Ridge case studies include large areas of low shipping intensity. We focus on three main sources of pollution: 1) Marine litter (widespread diffuse input), and in particular plastics (microplastics and macroplastics) and 2) Aquaculture platforms, as proxy of marine pollution sources (point source). feed, leading to major environmental concerns. 3) River discharges and nutrients (in between widespread and point source). Although river discharge and associated nutrients are a natural pressure in the coastal environment, anthropogenically polluted rivers can significantly alter the health of marine ecosystems, especially as metallic pollutants are associated with sediments. Open litter data is sparse and focused mainly on European waters. Continuous Plankton Recorder, which can also be used to sample plastics, covers not only European waters, but also an important part of Northwest Atlantic area. After revising multiples sources of river discharges and nutrients discharges the WaterGAP 2.2d model and the Global River Water Quality Archive have been identified as the best sources of data at the Atlantic Ocean and global scales. Aquaculture data is very limited even in European open datasets and it can be addressed applying machine learning to satellite data. Other seabed related data include oil exploitation, telecommunications, scientific exploration and seabed minerals. These data are integrated for European waters in EMODnet Seabed Habitats. In the Norwegian Sea, Celtic Sea, Benguela Current and South Brazilian Shelf additional local sources of oil exploitation data were available. In terms of telecommunications data, published data are predominantly landing stations and schematic routes. Regarding accurate spatial data on scientific surveys, only a few openly available sources have been identified at national and regional levels, and metadata are not standardised to be able to easily identify specific locations. Seabed mineral potential has been collated by EMODnet Seabed Habitats for most of the case study areas, except for the Benguela Current where local data were provided. Additional seabed mineral data were also provided for the South Brazilian Shelf, North Mid Atlantic Ridge and Benguela Current case study areas. The term big data was coined to capture the meaning of the emerging trend in large and heterogeneous data exploitation. In addition to its sheer volume, big data exhibit other unique characteristics as compared with traditional data. For instance, big data are commonly unstructured and require real-time analysis. This development calls for new computer science related system architectures for data acquisition, transmission, storage, and large-scale data processing mechanisms. Big data techniques enhanced by machine learning methods can increase the use of such data and their applicability to ecosystem-based management. Machine learning has already proven its potential in marine science. It has been applied, for example, to fisheries forecasting, automatic classification of plankton samples, identification of schools by species of fish in acoustic survey data, litter classification and litter forecasting. However, if AI methods are not fit for purpose, then trade-offs to accomplish appropriate performances can be missed or overfitting can lead to over confidence on AI capacity if proper validation and ground truth verification is not performed. This report highlights big data and machine learning-based datasets that are available to perform assessments at the level of the whole Atlantic Ocean. These datasets focus on the activities that impact open-ocean marine environments (shipping, fishing and litter) and coastal areas (river discharges and flows, and the growing aquaculture activity). The differentiation between fishing and non-fishing (e.g. travel) activities of fishing vessels as well as distinguishing the fishing gear is needed to go from mapping activities to pressures. For example, a fishing vessel en route to a fishing site will generate different levels and types of noise and emissions than it will whilst fishing. Noise and emissions will also differ depending on the fishing gear being used. Furthermore, the highest direct pressure exerted on the ecosystem occurs during fishing due to the removal of fish and bycatch, or litter generation from losing fishing gear and/or onboard activities. Members of ICES working group WGSHIP are actively working on the development of a conceptual framework for mapping the pressures and impacts of shipping.

Seagrass beds are among the most valuable ecosystems in the world but they are also among the ones most affected by human activities, and they have decreased significantly in recent decades. In many areas, such as in the Basque Country (northern Spain), seagrass beds occupy areas that are also of interest for human activities such as recreation and shellfishing. They may therefore face a number of pressures that cause damage or irreversible states. Taking into account the limited distribution of seagrass beds in the Basque Country and the interest in their conservation, an eight-month field experiment focusing on the Zostera noltei growing season was carried out to evaluate the effect of shellfish gathering. We used generalized linear models to assess different intensities of trampling and digging, as the most important pressures of shellfishing applied to Zostera noltei beds. The results indicated that shoot density of Z. noltei was negatively altered by trampling treatments and positively affected (as a recovery) by digging treatments. This finding suggests that shellfishing adversely affects seagrass abundance and is potentially responsible for its low density in the Oka estuary. Our findings are important for management and should be taken into account in seagrass conservation and restoration programmes.

[Departement_IRSTEA]Eaux [TR1_IRSTEA]QUASARE; International audience; The impact of species loss on ecosystems functioning depends on the amount of trait similarity between species, i.e. functional redundancy, but it is also influenced by the order in which species are lost. Here we investigated redundancy and sensitivity patterns across fish assemblages in lakes, rivers and estuaries. Several scenarios of species extinction were simulated to determine whether the loss ofvulnerable species (with high propensity of extinction when facing threats) causes a greater functional alteration than random extinction. Our results indicate that the functional redundancy tended toincrease with species richness in lakes and rivers, but not in estuaries. We demonstrated that i) in the three systems, some combinations of functional traits are supported by non-redundant species, ii) rarespecies in rivers and estuaries support singular functions not shared by dominant species, iii) the loss of vulnerable species can induce greater functional alteration in rivers than in lakes and estuaries. Overall, the functional structure of fish assemblages in rivers is weakly buffered against species extinction because vulnerable species support singular functions. More specifically, a hotspot of functionalsensitivity was highlighted in the Iberian Peninsula, which emphasizes the usefulness of quantitative criteria to determine conservation priorities.

Knowledge of the distribution and extent of seagrass habitats is currently the basis of management and conservation policies of the coastal zones in most European countries. This basic information is being requested through European directives for the establishment of monitoring programmes and the implementation of specific actions to preserve the marine environment. In addition, this information is crucial for the quantification of the ecological importance usually attributed to seagrass habitats due to, for instance, their involvement in biogeochemical cycles, marine biodiversity and quality of coastal waters or global carbon budgets. The seagrass atlas of Spain represents a huge collective effort performed by 84 authors across 30 Spanish institutions largely involved in the scientific research, management and conservation of seagrass habitats during the last three decades. They have contributed to the availability of the most precise and realistic seagrass maps for each region of the Spanish coast which have been integrated in a GIS to obtain the distribution and area of each seagrass species. Most of this information has independently originated at a regional level by regional governments, universities and public research organisations, which explain the elevated heterogeneity in criteria, scales, methods and objectives of the available information. On this basis, seagrass habitats in Spain occupy a total surface of 1,541,63 km2, 89% of which is concentrated in the Mediterranean regions; the rest is present in sheltered estuarine areas of the Atlantic peninsular regions and in the open coastal waters of the Canary Islands, which represents 50% of the Atlantic meadows. Of this surface, 71.5% corresponds to Posidonia oceanica, 19.5% to Cymodocea nodosa, 3.1% to Zostera noltii (=Nanozostera noltii), 0.3% to Zostera marina and 1.2% to Halophila decipiens. Species distribution maps are presented (including Ruppia spp.), together with maps of the main impacts and pressures that has affected or threatened their conservation status, as well as the management tools established for their protection and conservation. Despite this considerable effort, and the fact that Spain has mapped wide shelf areas, the information available is still incomplete and with weak precision in many regions, which will require an investment of major effort in the near future to complete the whole picture and respond to demands of EU directives. Versión del editor

International audience; The demographic strategies of fishes can be defined by specific combinations of traits expressed by organisms to cope with environmental constrains. Species traits thus influence the distribution and abundance of organisms by excluding species with traits poorly adapted to local conditions and enhancing performances of organisms possessing advantageous attributes. Fishes in estuaries belong to several ecological guilds, i.e. marine, freshwater, diadromous, and resident species, which perceive and respond to environmental components at different scales. In the present study, we hypothesized that the distributions of fish species across to gradient of estuarine habitats are related to their life history strategies. Eight life history traits were considered to reflect the demographic strategies of 168 taxa caught in 47 estuaries of the North East Atlantic coast. Our findings were replaced within a conceptual triangular model of life history, composed on three endpoint strategies: periodic (large, long generation time, high fecundity), opportunistic (small, short generation time, high reproductive effort) and equilibrium (low fecundity, large egg size, parental care). Various life history strategies co-occur in estuarine systems depending on fish ecological guilds, but our results demonstrated that species were mainly distributed along to an opportunistic-periodic gradient. The opportunistic attributes of estuarine resident species provided them high degree of demographic resilience, so that they can deal with a large range of estuarine environmental settings. However, the increasing of stressful conditions over the salinity gradient was appeared as crucial factor structuring the assemblages of resident fishes based on their demographic strategies. Our results highlighted a filtering effect associated with the system size. In small estuaries, fish assemblages are mainly composed on resident species with opportunistic traits, whereas the proportion of individuals with periodic attributes increased with system size. Contrary to our expectations, the decline of both species richness and abundance in estuaries subjected to human disturbances did not appeared significantly related to the life history attributes of fish assemblages. Our findings were discussed in relation the degree of environmental predictability at various spatio-temporal scales to underline general patterns in assembly processes of estuarine fauna.

A community hosted by an ecosystem composed of species sharing the same characteristics i.e. species showing the same response to the environment and/or species with the same impact on their environment, can be define as a community with high functional redundancy. Such community is supposed to be less vulnerable to species loss and the ecosystem functioning is also supposed to be less impacted than when communities are composed of species with different functional characteristics. In this work, we first described the fish communities of lakes, rivers and estuaries of France, Spain and Portugal using species richness and functional diversity. Functional diversity was a measure of the extent of complementary among species considering five characteristics previously define by different sources (literature, available database): fish size, vertical position in the water body, spawning habitat, trophic group, and swimming mode. For the three aquatic systems, the number of species and functional diversity was generally higher in northern and western France than in the Mediterranean areas; this geographical pattern was explained by historical events (last glacial period). Higher functional diversity shown in estuaries compare to lakes and rivers was explained by the importance of the connectivity between adjacent environments. Analysing correlations between functional redundancy and species richness, results suggest that higher taxonomic richness in freshwater ecosystems is likely to increase the stability and resilience of fish assemblages after environmental disturbance because of higher species redundancy whereas it is not the case in estuaries. Studying the impact of species loss according different scenarios, we also demonstrated that, in rivers and estuaries, rare species support singular ecological functions not shared by dominant species. Our results suggest also that functional diversity of fish assemblages in rivers can be more affected by environmental disturbances than in lakes and estuaries. Finally, using functional redundancy and taxonomic vulnerability, we proposed a composite index of functional vulnerability, minimised for highly redundant assemblages composed of species with low extinction risk. Fish communities of estuarine ecosystems appear less vulnerable to species loss in comparison with assemblages of lakes and rivers. Although these latter systems obtained comparable scores, the functional vulnerability was not influenced by the same component. Fish assemblages in lakes are often redundant but composed of a large part of vulnerable species, whereas river assemblages are in general poorly redundant but composed of species with low intrinsic vulnerability. This new score is proposed to be used in conservation perspective to define management priorities.

National audience; Les estuaires sont des zones attractives soumises à de nombreuses pressions anthropiques. Objectifs : identifier les effets combinés des pressions sur les systèmes biologiques ; classer les pressions en fonction du profit de restauration.

Aquatic ecosystems facing multiple stressors lead to challenging conditions for their management, as stressors can have additive, but also interactive effects on organisms, populations and communities. Accounting for these interactions is important in the assessment of the stressor’s impacts and to implement good restoration measures. Using a comparable modelling approach and large environmental and fish databases, the combined effect of water quality problems and hydrological stressors were assessed, based on characteristics of fish assemblages observed in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and estuaries of Europe. The effects of nonnative species in interaction with eutrophication and alteration of hydromorphology were also tested for fish assemblages of natural lakes and reservoirs. We show that for all the water body types, water quality problems are a major threat that impacts fish assemblages. Similarly, alteration of the hydro-morphology explains a large part of the composition of river and estuarine fish assemblages. Conversely, we fail to demonstrate an effect of this stressor on the fish community of lakes and reservoirs, as sufficient data are not available yet. However, in these standing waters the introduction of non-native species can explain the variability of some characteristics of fish assemblages. In a second step, we analysed the interactive effect of various stressors. Without interaction, the effect of two stressors on a fish assemblage characteristic corresponds to the sum of the individual effects. This additive effect was compared with the effects really observed in the assemblages to determine the type of interaction. The comparison was done for each fish assemblage characteristic impacted by stressors in each water body type. A large variability of multi-stressor impacts was observed, leading to higher or lower effects than expected in absence of interactions. These results suggest to consider all potential stressors and interactions in the development of fishbased tools dedicated to ecological status assessment or restoration monitoring whatever the water body type is.

International audience; European estuaries are subjected to a large spectrum of anthropogenic pressures, which are known to have additive, antagonistic, synergistic and multiplicative impacts on the functioning of ecological systems. Understanding the pressure-impact relationships and the interactions effects among pressures are essential requirements to develop accurate strategy of restoration. In this context, a key component is to identify priority actions and sort them to maximize the expected ecological improvement at each step of restoration. This study investigated the impact of multiple pressures in fish communities for 91 European transitional waters, with the aim of assisting managers to develop efficient strategies of restoration. Twenty environmental indicators were selected to assess the intensity of 10 major pressures affecting estuaries. Random Forest regression method was used to predict the fish ecological status of systems, assessed by the Ecological Quality Ratio (EQR), according to the combined effects of indicators. The relative importance of indicators and their effects on the partial ecological response was evaluated, highlighting gradual nonlinear relationships and thresholds shifts. The expected improvements of EQR were investigated for both individual and combined measures of restoration using the predictive performances of the random forest. The effects of pairwise restoration events, i.e. additive or interactive, were defined by comparing the EQR improvement for separated (i.e. sum of individual predictions) and combined events of pressure restoration. Strict additive effects were highlighted for only 7 pairs of pressures, whereas the 38 other pairs showed significant interactions suggesting antagonistic and synergistic effects. Our results showed that the fish ecological status of estuaries cannot be summarized by the sum of the individual responses for each pressure. This observation should be considered to define the priority order of pressures in management restoration strategies.

Here we present a new, pan-Atlantic compilation of data on key mesozooplankton species, including the possibly most important copepod, Calanus finmarchicus. Distributional data of ten representative zooplankton taxa, from recent (2000–2009) Continuous Plankton Recorder data, are presented, along with basin-scale data of the phytoplankton colour index. Then we present a compilation of data on C. finmarchicus including observations of abundance, demography, egg production and female size with accompanying data on temperature and chlorophyll. This is a contribution by Canadian, European and US scientists and their institutions. http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.820732, http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.824423, http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.828393.

[Departement_IRSTEA]Eaux [TR1_IRSTEA]QUASARE; National audience; Ce chapitre permet de faire le point sur les orientations de recherche à envisager pour améliorier l'état des connaissances sur les effets de changements climatiques sur les communautés d'intérêt halieutique et les perspectives de gestion pour le maintien de l'activité économique qui en découle.

Intertidal seagrasses show high variability in their extent and location, with local extinctions and (re-)colonizations being inherent in their population dynamics. Suitable habitats are identified usually using Species Distribution Models (SDM), based upon the overall distribution of the species; thus, accounting solely for spatial variability. To include temporal effects caused by large interannual variability, we constructed SDMs for different combinations and fusions of yearly distribution data. The main objectives were to: (i) assess the spatio-temporal dynamics of an intertidal seagrass bed of Zostera marina; (ii) select the most accurate SDM techniques to model different temporal distribution data subsets of the species; (iii) assess the relative importance of the environmental variables for each data subset; and (iv) evaluate the accuracy of the models to predict species conservation areas, addressing implications for management. To address these objectives, a time series of 14-year distribution data of Zostera marina in the Ems estuary (The Netherlands) was used to build different data subsets: (1) total presence area; (2) a conservative estimate of the total presence area, defined as the area which had been occupied during at least 4 years; (3) core area, defined as the area which had been occupied during at least 2/3 of the total period; and (4–6) three random selections of monitoring years. On average, colonized and disappeared areas of the species in the Ems estuary showed remarkably similar transition probabilities of 12.7% and 12.9%, respectively. SDMs based upon machine-learning methods (Boosted Regression Trees and Random Forest) outperformed regression-based methods. Current velocity and wave exposure were the most important variables predicting the species presence for widely distributed data. Depth and sea floor slope were relevant to predict conservative presence area and core area. It is concluded that, the fusion of the spatial distribution data from four monitoring years could be enough to establish an accurate habitat suitability model of Zostera marina in the Ems estuary. The methodology presented offers a promising tool for selecting realistic conservation areas for those species that show high population dynamics, such as many estuarine and coastal species.

1365-2486; Ocean warming can modify the ecophysiology and distribution of marine organisms, and relationships between species, with nonlinear interactions between ecosystem components potentially resulting in trophic amplification. Trophic amplification (or attenuation) describe the propagation of a hydroclimatic signal up the food web, causing magnification (or depression) of biomass values along one or more trophic pathways. We have employed 3-D coupled physical-biogeochemical models to explore ecosystem responses to climate change with a focus on trophic amplification. The response of phytoplankton and zooplankton to global climate-change projections, carried out with the IPSL Earth System Model by the end of the century, is analysed at global and regional basis, including European seas (NE Atlantic, Barents Sea, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Bay of Biscay, Adriatic Sea, Aegean Sea) and the Eastern Boundary Upwelling System (Benguela). Results indicate that globally and in Atlantic Margin and North Sea, increased ocean stratification causes primary production and zooplankton biomass to decrease in response to a warming climate, whilst in the Barents, Baltic and Black Seas, primary production and zooplankton biomass increase. Projected warming characterised by an increase in sea surface temperature of 2.29 ± 0.05 ºC leads to a reduction in zooplankton and phytoplankton biomasses of 11% and 6%, respectively. This suggests negative amplification of climate driven modifications of trophic level biomass through bottom-up control, leading to a reduced capacity of oceans to regulate climate through the biological carbon pump. Simulations suggest negative amplification is the dominant response across 47% of the ocean surface and prevails in the tropical oceans; whilst positive trophic amplification prevails in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans. Trophic attenuation is projected in temperate seas. Uncertainties in ocean plankton projections, associated to the use of single global and regional models, imply the need for caution when extending these considerations into higher trophic levels. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.