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MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling

Marine Forests of animals, plants and algae: nature-based tools to protect and restore biodiversity

Alternative title: Undervannsskogenes dyr, planter og alger: naturbaserte verktøy for å beskytte og gjenopprette biologisk mangfold

Awarded: NOK 3.0 mill.

Underwater environments such as seagrass beds, kelp forests and deep-sea corals are ecosystems with high biological diversity, important for many organisms through spawning grounds, protection and food access, protect coastal areas and store carbon from the atmosphere. Conservation and restoration of these habitat types is therefore important to continue benefiting from these ecosystem services in the future. RESTORESEAS is an international collaborative project with eleven countries to develop new methods for the protection and restoration of these ecosystems. This includes efforts to restore ecosystems, estimates of past and present extent and function, as well as future scenarios for vulnerable areas. NORCE contributes expertise in the use of environmental DNA, both for insight into the state of organisms back in time, for mapping organisms in sediments and water bodies linked to this type of ecosystem from Norway to Brazil, and monitoring disease-causing organisms and pathogens. The coordinated approach provides an overview of the challenges associated with the conservation and monitoring of vulnerable areas, so that management strategies can be designed to preserve ecosystem functions in the long term in light of challenges such as human impact and climate change. In the first phase of the project, NORCE has worked on the development of sampling methodology for environmental DNA and contributed to the harmonization of the methodology in the project. NORCE has communicated this through a workshop aimed at all project participants. NORCE has also collected samples along coastal areas in Sweden and Norway and started analyzes of these samples.

RESTORESEAS is a holistic integration of climate-adaptation in conservation and restoration, at functional scales from gene expression to cross-ocean distributions and long-term baseline shifts including past eDNA imprinted in marine sediments. It develops approaches for conservation and restoration integrating previously overlooked roles of microbes and pathogens. Biodiversity predictions over space and time, compared with past and future climate proxies, will reveal climate-threatened marine forests of the Atlantic Ocean, as regions where restoration plans require climate-adapted strategies. Biodiversity tendencies over time includes estimates using complementary approaches - models trained with global data and eDNA estimates of past and current baselines in biodiversity including estimates from eDNA of ancient sediments of natural and disturbed sites. RESTORESEAS will develop ecosystem function indicators based on descriptors of total biodiversity using eDNA of the water, and long-term biodiversity tendencies and carbon sequestration using eDNA of relevant sediments. RESTORESEAS will be proof of concept of the use of genetic and functional diversity in restoration of degraded habitats, including functional genetic diversity (best adapted genotypes), and diversity and role of symbionts and pathogens. The societal outcomes build on expanding the already ongoing successful examples practices of local integration of citizens (fishermen and teachers) in restoration, ensuring that the willingness to improve these habitats will continue in civil society in the long-term after the project ends. We will continue our work with local and global institutional contacts and involvements and with the support of BiodivERsA in policy communication towards the EU and the UN strategies. RESTORESEAS will spread by going beyond theory in demonstrating results that serve as role models, and offering ways to use our support for replication of the same initiatives globally.

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Funding scheme:

MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling