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This report summarizes the discussions during two virtual meetings with different stakeholders with interest in the Barents Sea and off-Greenland ecosystems, respectively. The meetings were based on the work from Task 6.8 “Demonstrations for fisheries and environmental management agencies” and Task 6.2. “Improved ecosystem understanding and management”. Stakeholders represented a broad specter of marine- and maritime-related authorities in Norway, Greenland and Denmark, the fishing industry, the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) working group of the Arctic Council, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, INTAROS partners and participants from other EU projects. The presentations of the monitoring and model results were refined and angled to be of relevance and use for the participating stakeholders. The stakeholders were in general interested in the approach, results, and conclusions. The discussion made it clear that as users in charge of sectorial human activity management, they valued scientific testing and suggestions for improving ecosystem understanding. They recommended that the next step could be to look at not only national data set indicators, but also relate those to an Arctic international setting. The Norwegian Environmental Agency suggested that a climate approach would be useful also for the Barents Sea. Likewise, the more complex food web indicators presented for the Barents Sea could be useful to apply to the Greenland coastal system. Stakeholders from both geographic areas emphasized that data from long-term monitoring of key variables is important for their work and that models can be useful as supporting information on indicators and future scenarios if the model uncertainty is assessed and explained. These seminars highlight the importance of inviting stakeholders responsible for all sectors of marine-related human activities to dialogues on research and monitoring of the climate, natural resources and ecosystems. In a fast-changing scientific world, with an increasing amount of knowledge, it is important to make available, timely and in the right format, the best possible information.

The INTAROS project develops an integrated Arctic Observation System (iAOS) by extending, improving and unifying existing systems in the different regions of the Arctic. Within INTAROS, WP5 (Data integration and management) is tasked with designing and implementing evolutions of the cloud platform with geo statistical tools for services as part of the iAOS. The work effort in Task 5.4 has been to design, develop and distribute a Geostatistical Library to be used as a scientific toolbox in some different data analysis workflows (e.g. for the iAOS showcase applications). The first version of the Geostatistical Library (v1) was considering CTD data provided by IMR for estimating ocean temperature maps in the Barents Sea (D5.6). This document describes the new version of the Geostatistical Library (v2) where some additional capabilities have been developed. A set of new functions deals with weather stations and AROME Arctic model in order to estimate snow depth maps in Isfjorden (Svalbard). Another set supports the combination of ICES CTD dataset, GINR trawls dataset and GEBCO bathymetry for estimating bottom ocean temperature maps along the West Greenland coast., Reviewed by: Hanne Sagen and Torill Hamre

The main aim of this deliverable is to offer advice on how the practice of applying existing observational data, ecosystem models, and indicators may be expanded from the Barents Sea and Disko Bay, West-Greenland to a wider range of Arctic sea regions and ecosystems. Further, we build advice and recommendations upon the established Norwegian Barents Sea ecosystem management plan, the more local management system for Disko Bay and focused individual and group interaction with a wide range of stakeholders in both areas. The expected impact is to provide advice on the most relevant and useful scientific basis for better-informed decisions and better-documented processes for managers and policymakers on local, regional and pan-Arctic scales. We conclude that both observational data and models are needed to get a holistic overview of the ecosystem status and to make reliable projections. The ecosystem models applied have different structural complexity and spatial resolutions making them suited for different roles in supporting the existing and future integrated Arctic Observation System (iAOS). The NoBa Atlantis model, applied to the Barents Sea, is the most complex model including many trophic levels and a range of anthropogenic pressures. It is highly suitable to make management scenarios and indices of higher trophic levels but is more coarsely resolved in time and space than the other two models we use. NORWECOM.E2E is a well-established model system with high temporal-spatial resolution for the Barents Sea. It has the carbon cycle and key fish species included.NORWECOM.E2E is well suited for making Observing System Simulation Experiments. FlexSem-ERGOM is a relatively new model for lower tropic levels with the highest spatial resolution among the three models, but with focus on smaller coastal systems and environmental changes. In INTAROS it has been set up for the Disko Bay. It has the advantage of being very flexible and can easily be adapted to a wide range of local ecosystems in the Arctic. Interaction with stakeholders from fisheries, maritime, and petroleum management and industry, and especially environmental management, has been a central part of our work. How the different stakeholders want to be informed, and what kind of information they seek, is presented, showing that managers are not negative to inclusion of well tested models in future ecosystem state and trend reports. Stakeholders generally found that models are useful, but that model uncertainty should be clearly communicated. Hence, there is a basis for future application of models for advice to especially environmental management. The interaction between scientists and a wide range of managers and industry representatives established in INTAROS and other ongoing projects will be continued despite no established dedicated long-term funding. The current report is based on the work carried out in INTAROS Task 6.2 “Improved ecosystem understanding and management” and Task 6.8 “Demonstrations for fisheries and environmental management agencies&rdquo