Work activities

The research activity of the project will be structured in six (five research and one coordination)

interrelated work packages which link in a matrix structure to Case Study areas. 

The collaboration between partners with different backgrounds and synergies are granted by

a spiral project design where work flows from ecologists to modelers and then to economists, and back to the ecologists and so forth. This iterative design forces each discipline to work compatible to the other disciplines in the project, and opens up for synergies by putting the different disciplines' views on the phenomenon of ‘critical thresholds’ into perspective.

Specifically the activities include:

• Mobilizing available biological, environmental, economic and fisheries data.

• The collection of new data to estimate the role played by environmental conditions and management policy (protection and limitation regimes of artisanal fishing and sea urchin fishing) in regulating the critical collapse thresholds of a) the marine forest ecosystems, b) the self-sustainability of sea urchin populations and c) the economic sustainability of sea urchin harvesting and artisanal fishery.

• The development of ecosystem models, bio-economic models and the development of analysis of productivity and efficiency of fishery (both sea urchins and sparids) to identify sustainable socio-economic scenarios.

• The development of a management tools package to facilitate applied management, focusing on best practices for monitoring and collection of biological and socio-economic data, a decision tree and an interactive visualization tool.

The results of the Project will be disseminated to citizens and schools through seminaries and dedicated events as well as in scientific journals. The technical applications of best management practices, as well as results of data collections, models and simulated scenarios, will be propagated for the benefit of national and EU level strategies and policies.