Search

The Working Group on Integrated Assessment of the North Sea (WGINOSE) aims to provide a holistic analysis of the present and future status of the North Sea Ecosystem and the human activities therein. Analysis is split among 14 strata since the North Sea is a diverse ecosystem spanning the shallows of the Southern North Sea banks to the deeps of the Norwegian Trench. State-of-the-art statistical methods for trend analysis have been performed on time-series data spanning 35 years (between 1984–2022) with two different methods. In addition, a flagged observation (FO) analysis has been performed. The overall picture is that herring and cod show a downward trend in most subareas, while plaice, mackerel and sprat have an upward one. The total biomass of zooplankton is upward in areas Utsira, German Bight and Norwegian Trench, and downward in the Fladen area. The FO analysis give several occasions where the fish stocks are above the estimated trend in the period 2020–2022, and a few that is below. A lack of consistent datasets for oceanography suggest that next year that analysis will be based on model-data (Copernicus). An interactive map of human activities was developed and presented the first time in 2020, and further updated in 2021 with more layers. All data are obtained from The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet). Procedures for periodic update are documented and published. The plan is to update the pressure maps every third years, in time for revision of the Greater North Sea ecosystem overview. A paper has been published in Frontiers in Marine Science which explores the utility of Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) and conceptual models developed by WGINOSE and others for the North Sea (Olsen et al., 2023). Information gained from a series of workshop with stakeholder’s engagement developing qualitative (mental) models for different North Sea strata, showed the potential of contributing to integrated ecosystem assessment (IEAs) to facilitate the pathways towards an ecosystem-based management advice. The Ecosystem Overview of the Greater North Sea was updated in 2022 following the new structure (ICES 2022). The overview concluded that the greatest impact risk is caused by fishing followed by shipping. WGINOSE will work toward the operationalization of the strata specific ecosystem trend analysis including the integration of indicators of ecosystem state and function including information generated from models output; and provide the best available science for quantifying and evaluate trade-offs between different human activities and ecosystem components and services.

In post Peace Accords Guatemala, tourism development is engendering new claims and claimants to territory in a climate of land tenure insecurity and enduring inequality. Through ethnographical research, this dissertation explores the territoriality of tourism development through the empirical lens of an archaeological site called Mirador in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. I develop a process-based understanding of territoriality to analyze tourism related struggles over identity, boundary making, land use, heritage claims, and territorial rule at the frontier of state power. In theorizing tourism's territoriality, I argue that the intertwined practices of capitalist spatial colonization and the commodification of place uniquely characterize the industry. I identify five manifestations of tourism's territoriality in the Maya Biosphere: practices of historical and geographical erasure in Mirador tourism imaginaries, territory-based identity production, tourism-enabled practices of enclosure and land dispossession, the "scaling up" of heritage claims through the social construction of global heritage, and the militarization of conservation spaces through tactics of counterinsurgency eco-tourism development.In conceptualizing tourism's territoriality, this project contributes to the fields of political ecology, critical tourism studies, political geography, and spatial theories of territory. At the chapter level, analytical contributions include analyses of identity formation in contemporary Guatemala, the role of tourism development in driving the global land grab, how implicit ideas of scale in global heritage discourses usurp local claims to natural and cultural resources, and the revival of counterinsurgency methods in the making of paradisiacal places. In Guatemala's booming post-war tourism sector, this dissertation argues that ongoing struggles over territory are taking deceptively innocuous forms of national park creation, world heritage designation, and environmental conservation.

WKNSMSE (Workshop on North Sea stocks Management Strategy Evaluation) took place over two physical meetings (19-21 November 2018 and 26-28 February 2019, but at ICES HQ, Copenhagen) and several WebEx meetings, was chaired by José De Oliveira (UK) and included 30 participants from Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK and the European Commission, and two reviewers from South African and New Zealand. The purpose of this work was to evaluate long-term management strategies for jointly-managed stocks in the North Sea (cod, haddock, whiting, saithe and autumn-spawning herring) between the European Union and Norway, following a request from EU-Norway. The first physical meeting provided an ICES interpretation of the EU-Norway request, agreed the specifications of the MSE, decided on the tools and approaches to use, and developed a work plan, while the second meeting (and subsequent follow-up WebEx meetings) discussed results, developed conclusions, ensured the minimum requirements for conducting MSEs (developed by WKGMSE2) were met, and finalised the report. ICES were tasked to find “optimal” combinations of harvest control rule parameters (Ftarget and Btrigger) for management strategies with or without stability mechanisms (TAC constraints and banking and borrowing scenarios). “Optimal” combinations were defined as those combinations of Ftarget and Btrigger that simultaneously maximised long-term yield while being precautionary (long-term risk3≤5%). The request also asked for sensitivity tests once the management strategies were “optimised”. The approach adopted for all stocks was to include the assessment and forecast in a full-feedback MSE simulation, and to condition the baseline operating model on the benchmarked ICES assessment. The one exception was haddock, where it was not possible to include TSA in the full-feedback simulation because it was too slow to converge and requires manual intervention; SAM was used instead as a reasonable approximation. The approach also considered alternative operating models to capture a broader range of uncertainties. Full-feedback simulations were computationally challenging and required the use of parallelisation and high-performance computing; it also meant that the time-frame for the work was extremely tight, and in some cases, analyses were restricted. Nonetheless, the work was completed for all stocks, and “optimal” combinations for most management strategies were found. There were some notable issues that arose through this suite of MSEs, including that some management strategies that were precautionary in the long-term could have unsavoury and avoidable features in the short term (depending on the management strategy), and that reference points estimated by EqSim were, in many cases, no longer found to be precautionary in the MSE.

The ICES Working Group on Seasonal to Decadal Prediction of Marine Ecosystems (WGS2D), chaired by Mark R. Payne, Denmark, met for the second time in Copenhagen, Denmark, 27–31 August 2018. The group aims to develop and operationalise forecasts of marine ecological properties (e.g. distribution, recruitment, phenology) that are of direct relevance to ICES advice and monitoring activities.WGS2D’s first forecast product, for the spawning habitat of Blue whiting, has now been through one full cycle of making a forecast and then verifying the result. Good agreement was found between the forecast habitat and the observed distribution (see Figure), particularly in the core region, confirming a successful forecast. Refinements to the forecasting system have been made based on the lessons learn from this first iteration.The Blue whiting spawning habitat forecast was updated for the 2019 spawning season. The forecast suggest a continuation the highly compacted distribution seen in recent years.A new forecast product, for the feeding habitat of Bluefin tuna was produced and is now being delivered operationally. The forecast for the 2019 feeding season suggests the total area of thermally suitable habitat will be lower than the peaks seen in 2010 and 2012, although the amount of habitat is expected to remain above that seen prior to the mid-1990s.Several new case studies have also been initiated and are currently under development. These include the spatial distribution of Saithe, and recruitment prediction for Sandeel, Barents Sea Cod, and Iberian Sardine. Requests for climate projection data for use in integrated assessments were answered. A request to examine the predictability of mackerel spawning distribution was also examined, but there does not appear to be sufficient scientific support for developing a forecast product.During 2018, WGS2D also co-sponsored a theme session titled “From prediction to projection: the role of seasonal to decadal forecasts in a changing climate” at the Fourth International Symposium on the Effects of Climate Change on the World’s Oceans (ECCWO) in Washington DC, USA, 4–8 June 2018. The session was co-sponsored in collaboration with WGS2D’s sister working group within PICES, WG-CEP. The session was well subscribed and well attended, and has helped to raise the profile of ecological forecasting within the ICES and PICES communities.