Seminars of Department of Botany and Centre of Excellence EcolChange
Speaker: Jonne Kotta is research director of the Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu. His research focuses on ecological investigations of marine biodiversity in benthic habitats in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland.
Title of the talk: Climate change, human impacts and marine ecosystems
Time: Thursday, 20. February 2020 at 14.15
Place: Tartu, Lai 40-218 (Vaga auditorium)
Summary: Marine ecosystems are often assumed to be highly vulnerable to ongoing climate change and introduction of exotic species. Although these stressors are completely different they both increase the risk of disrupting the pathways of energy flow through native ecosystems and result notable shifts in structure and function. The current lack of understanding of ecosystem interaction cascades, however, underscores the need for more basic exploratory research. Here I present a real data and modelling evidence from Arctic, Antarctic marine ecosystems and the Baltic Sea to show sensitivities of different environments to these global stressors. Incorporating ecosystem changes from climate change and exotic species is an important task of maritime spatial planning and marine resource management. We recently developed an online decision support tools capable of linking big data and modelling cumulative impacts of multiple stressors. Such scientific resources have huge unused potential as they can help decision-makers to select efficient mitigation actions in order to achieve environmental and socio-economic sustainability.
