Objectives

The overall objective of the MUrFor project is to develop a management framework for the provisioning of natural resources (fishes and urchins) from Mediterranean marine forest habitats, while maintaining ecosystem functioning and biodiversity conservation. 

This will be achieved through an understanding of the main processes governing coupled ecological and socio-economic systems, which is a necessary requirement for effectively reconciling conservation and sustainable exploitation objectives, and for identifying optimal trade-off scenarios that can determine successful management strategies. 

To achieve this main objective, it will be  necessary:

1) to identify critical thresholds leading to hard-to-reverse states on sea urchin populations (overharvesting), on the habitat (overgrazing), and on the fishery (economic sustainability) . 

This will be achieved through a multi-modelling approach, by deploying a mix of single-species, multi-species, ecosystem and economic models that can tackle the issue from different, complementary perspectives. 

2) to provide a proof-of-concept showing the possibility and the necessity of a nature-inclusive management of these socio-ecological systems under the holistic framework of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM), while taking into account resource users and stakeholders perspectives, in line with the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) demand for an ecosystem approach to fishery.