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Project title

Quantifying the Impacts of Multiple Stressors on marine benthic resources (QIMS)

Primary Funding Agency

Marine Institute

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

n/a

Lead Organisation

University of Dublin, Trinity College (TCD)

Lead Applicant

n/a

Project Abstract

Global food security and reducing our reliance on fossil-fuel based energy sources are two of the largest challenges we face as scientists and a society. As an Island nation, we are poised to tackle such challenges building on our ocean wealth but our rudimentary understanding of the processes that underpin the functioning of our marine environment are limiting our ability to harness that wealth. A further challenge is to understand how marine ecosystems will function under changing environmental conditions. We currently lack the national capacity and infrastructure to address these questions empirically, which is required to quantify key processes (e.g. primary and secondary production, nutrient cycling, predator-prey interactions), under current and predicted environmental conditions. This information is essential to accurately predict our capacity to produce bioenergy, food and biomaterials from marine organisms (e.g. seaweed, shellfish). This award will provide a controlled state-of-the-art facility, unique to Ireland, a mesocosm-based platform for Quantifying the Impacts of Multiple Stressors (QIMS; e.g. ocean acidification, warming, nutrient enrichment and species loss) on marine benthic resources. Globally, there are very few facilities that combine the ability to manipulate multiple stressors simultaneaously. The scale of the mesocosm platform (100 individual mesocosm units) is essential to test explicit hypotheses about the functioning of marine benthic ecosystems under different regimes (i.e. multiple stressors), given their innate variability, while ensuring sufficient power (i.e. replication) for robust statistical analyses. The mesocosm facility, combined with a suite of state-of-the-art environmental monitoring equipment (e.g. benthotorch, diving PAM etc.) will provide the necessary infrastructure that will help place Ireland at the forefront of this emerging field. This facility will address research questions that specifically quantify and characterise the independent and cumulative effects of multiple stressors on key ecological processes that underpin the development of benthic species cultivation for biofuel, food and potential biomaterials.

Grant Approved

�194,654.00

Research Hub

n/a

Research Theme

Ireland's Future Climate, its Impacts, and Adaptation Options

Start Date

01/12/2017

Initial Projected Completion Date

30/04/2019