Long Term Ecological Data Series in cetaceans:

essential but challenging!

ECS 2022 - workshop

4^th April 2022 , 9-13h CET - online

WHY THIS WORKSHOP?

In recent years, Long Term Ecological Research have become increasingly important to understand ecosystem complexity, identify natural variability, and allow detection of rare events or disturbances caused by anthropogenic or natural changes.

Ecological systems usually operate at large temporal scales, which are not always considered in traditional data collection. For instance, climate change or cumulative effects of anthropogenic activities, may have an impact that could be overlooked when analysing short periods of data. These usually provide a good understanding of the time window considered, but a weak and often misunderstood general context.

Collecting long-term wildlife occurrence data is challenging, but opportunistic platforms often provide a cost-effective method to obtain information over long periods and defined areas. For cetaceans, whale watching has expanded worldwide, providing great opportunities to register their occurrence. In the Azores, whale watching has been established more than 30 years ago, and mostly in the last decade, it has become a standardised and reliable source of cetacean occurrence data in the entire archipelago, being collected in platforms such as MONICET. Nevertheless, as it is well known, maintaining and keeping LTER is a challenging process, due to many potential inconveniences such as lack of funding to maintain the initiatives.

The information provided by LTE data is essential to complement the current understanding of the ecosystem and provide important clues to improve management and conservation plans, allowing natural variation to occur, while preserving species and ecosystems. We want to encourage researchers to share their experience and outputs of LTE programs for cetaceans, especially those based on citizen science. Moreover, we aim to promote a discussion on how long-term initiatives can be kept alive, using real-world examples and opportunities.

AIMS of the WORKSHOP:

1. To compile and disseminate ongoing cetacean Long Term Ecological (LTE) data initiatives, with a particular focus on those based on citizen science.

2. To identify the main challenges and opportunities in cetacean LTE data series.

DOWNLOAD FINAL REPORT OF THE WORKSHOP