Multiscale Analysis of Integrated and Species-Specific Response to Climate Forcing and Eutrophication in Northern European Seas

The Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS) maintains and continually extends their records from the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey, one of the longest and richest marine monitoring programmes for the North Atlantic and the North Sea. The data in this survey has the potential for yielding unique insights into the long term trends and driving forces on marine ecosystems in this region, such as for example climate change impacts. This project will develop novel statistical methods for analysing the CRP data, aiming to determine the different regimes of behaviour associated with large or small spatial as well as temporal scales, and train the student to refine and apply such methods. The overall goal will be to ascertain if different anthropogenic pressures operate at different spatial and temporal scales in Northern European seas. Developing such methods will introduce multiscale analysis for collections of ecosystem processes, and quantify the different scale effects of eutrophication and climate change. The project will also aim to quantify biological interactions between species, once the external driving forces have been accounted for. The marine monitoring data is provided by SAHFOS, the designated project partner. SAHFOS will also provide the necessary ecological expertise to guide the developments of the project, necessary to make real inroads into the important scientific problem of disentangling and understanding the complex interactions of climate, eutrophication and plankton abundance. By combining the scientific understanding with suitable statistical methods information can be extracted from this rich and complex collection of data, and the uncertainty of estimation accounted for.