Worldwide there is a fundamental need to understand how to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem functioning to ensure that they deliver ecosystem services and societal goods and benefits necessary for our wellbeing and welfare. The MARBEFS project focuses on how marine ecosystems benefit society.
By: Sabine KJ Cochrane // Akvaplan-niva, Herman Hummel // Hummel Foundation for Sustainable Solutions, The Netherlands and Jan Marcin Węsławski // Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Norway and other Arctic nations have a particular responsibility for understanding ongoing climate-driven ecosystem changes in high latitudes, where the impacts of change are highly visible. Coastal communities in Svalbard and northern Norway are valuable study areas. In these places, we see not only a changing climate, but also increasing human use of the marine environment: here, much of the economy now stems from ecotourism, targeting marine wildlife and nature. There therefore is an urgent need to assess the holistic value of coastal and marine biodiversity and their ecosystem services and societal goods and benefits, as a basis for cost-effective management of human activities.
MARBEFES studies coastal ecosystems and ecological communities at 12 locations within the four main overarching European marine regions.
The project is developing a range of innovative tools for cost-efficient mapping of biodiversity (and its indicators) including automated species-recognition tools, coupling of biogeochemical modelling with ecosystem health assessment, and linking of biological traits to overall ecosystem functioning. In addition, it is using citizen science for both education and data collection.
All pressures in the marine environment present a risk either to nature or to society, and so we are developing and demonstrating various risk assessment and risk management processes, with ecosystem, societal, and economic components. These then are integrated into a series of “what if?” scenarios, whose applicability is tested beyond European waters.
This article focuses on Svalbard and Porsangerfjorden, the two northernmost study areas in the MARBEFES project.
The project has a strong focus on stakeholder involvement as users of information and tools within a toolbox for assessing biodiversity and ecosystem health. We aim to create a virtual toolbox to guide users to the appropriate tools. This has been informed by the MARBEFES team conducting over 250 stakeholder surveys and interviews across Europe, 30 of which have been in the Arctic.
Svalbard is represented by Hornsund and Kongsfjorden as relatively pristine biodiversity areas, which offer contrasting scenarios of oceanographic change (“still cold” and “warmed up”. respectively). For socioeconomic issues, we focus on the town of Longyearbyen, which was established in the early 1900s for coal mining, but currently relies mostly on tourism and a strong research and education community, with associated infrastructure. Most of the population is strongly driven by an adventure-loving lifestyle and outdoor pursuits such as hiking, snowmobiling, skiing, and boat/kayak touring dominate leisure activities.
Porsangerfjorden, on the other hand, has long been inhabited by humans: traces of settlements dating from between 9000 and 4000 BC have been found there. The area was almost exclusively inhabited by the original indigenous Sami people, until around 1750, when the earliest Kven people came from northern Finland and Sweden and began to settle. The influx of Norwegians to the area came relatively late – even in 1910, only 13% of the inhabitants were Norwegian. Whereas a large proportion of Longyearbyen’s inhabitants live there only for a few years, much of the population around Porsangerfjorden has multi-generational roots and a strong sense of connection between the seasonality of nature and their own lifestyle and cultural identity. Leisure activities are strongly connected to personal food-gathering (fish, berries, mushrooms, and game such as wildfowl and European moose).
Many of the general environmental concerns that are prevalent across Europe appear to be less of an issue in the Arctic because of overall low population density; this reflects the sense of space and easy access to undisturbed nature.
Climate change is especially apparent in the Arctic, both in Svalbard and in the Porsanger region, where fjords that used to be seasonally ice-covered now have open water for large parts of the winter, restricting snowmobile transport routes and activities such as ice fishing. As another indication of change, thriving populations of Atlantic cod and the European blue mussel, previously absent for many decades or even centuries are now established around Svalbard. Porsangerfjorden has experienced a marked decline in its kelp forests and there has been a decline in spawning grounds for fish such as Atlantic cod. The extent to which the various predator–prey relations that have led to these changes are related to climate or human impacts (such as overfishing) is still a matter of ongoing research. The Pacific “pink” salmon also has invaded the area and is competing with the spawning territories of the native Atlantic salmon, fishing of which is a large source of revenue. This has led to initiation of much research and management programmes.
Both local people and businesses in the Arctic have a very strong sense of seasonality, which was less apparent elsewhere in Europe. In Porsanger, people define the seasons according to when various species (terrestrial, freshwater, and marine) are present and thus also available for harvesting. In Svalbard, the extremely marked seasonality dictates the activities of not only residents, but also those of the research and tourist sectors, both of which have become major pillars in the economy of Longyearbyen.