The overarching goal of IMMERSE project is to ensure that the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) will have continuing access to world-class marine modelling tools for its next generation systems while leveraging advances in space and information technologies, therefore allowing it to address the ever-increasing and evolving demands for marine monitoring and prediction in the 2020s and beyond. In response to the future priorities for CMEMS, IMMERSE will develop new capabilities to: - enable the production of ocean forecasts and analyses that exploit upcoming high resolution satellite datasets, - deliver ocean analyses and forecasts with the higher spatial resolution and additional process complexity demanded by users, - exploit the opportunities of new high performance computing (HPC) technology - allow easy interfacing of CMEMS products with detailed local coastal models. These developments will be delivered in the NEMO ocean model, an established, world-class ocean modelling system that already forms the basis of the majority of CMEMS analysis and forecast products. Hence the pathway from the research in IMMERSE to implementation in CMEMS will be simple and seamless, as the model code developed will be directly applicable in CMEMS models. NEMO has a long track record of producing and maintaining a stable, robustly engineered code base of the type that is needed for operational applications, including CMEMS. The IMMERSE consortium combines world-class expertise in ocean modelling, applied mathematics and HPC, established software engineering processes and infrastructure, and in-depth knowledge of the CMEMS systems and downstream CMEMS systems. Thus IMMERSE is exceptionally well placed to deliver the operational-quality model code required to meet the emerging needs of CMEMS, and maintain it into the future. We indeed believe that a three-month extension of the project allow us to better assess the impact of new developments to NEMO on our prototype CMEMS systems (WP6), to better assess the impact of CMEMS service evolutions onto downstream applications (WP8) and also offer some interesting opportunities for communicating the results of the project to the broader NEMO and CMEMS communities (WP2). In more detail : The evaluation of the IBI Zoom demonstrator, which has been developed as part of IMMERSE would directly benefit from an extension. The team has made very good progress and D6.1 is now ready for submission after internal review. Still, the re-organisation of the workshare, in the context of the departure of Ocean Next and the difficulties encountered at EPPE, implies that a larger fraction of the work will be done by the same staff. Should they have a bit more time, they would be able to perform more in depth analysis. This will in particular allow them to fully exploit the work done by IMEDEA through the subcontracting. I think this activity is key for demonstrating the impact of NEMO development on future CMEMS systems. The extension will also allow the groups involved in WP8 to produce more consolidated results regarding the impact of service evolutions on downstream applications. There again, the teams are making good progress although several of them have encountered hiring difficulties in the post-covid context. It should be stressed that the quality of their results somewhat depends on the ability of the involved teams to articulate IMMERSE funding with other on-going activities in their groups. Here again I think that the proposed extension will mechanically improve the quality of the output of WP8. A key dimension of the final phase of the project is the communication of our results to the broader NEMO and CMEMS communities. These activities have generally been slowed down during the project because of the pandemics and the subsequent difficulties in planning events and travels. As a consequence, the resources planned for formatting and communicating our results have n

The project MERCES is focused on the restoration of different degraded marine habitats, with the aim of: 1) assessing the potential of different technologies and approaches; 2) quantifying the returns in terms of ecosystems services and their socio-economic impacts; 3) defining the legal-policy and governance frameworks needed to optimize the effectiveness of the different restoration approaches. Specific aims include: a) improving existing, and developing new, restoration actions of degraded marine habitats; b) increasing the adaptation of EU degraded marine habitats to global change; c) enhancing marine ecosystem resilience and services; d) conducting cost-benefit analyses for marine restoration measures; e) creating new industrial targets and opportunities. To achieve these objectives MERCES created a multi-disciplinary consortium with skills in marine ecology, restoration, law, policy and governance, socio-economics, knowledge transfer, dissemination and communication. MERCES will start from the inventory of EU degraded marine habitats (WP1), conduct pilot restoration experiments (WP2, WP3, WP4), assess the effects of restoration on ecosystem services (WP5). The legal, policy and governance outputs will make effective the potential of marine restoration (WP6) and one dedicated WP will assess the socio-economic returns of marine ecosystems’ restoration (WP7). The transfer of knowledge and the links with the industrial stakeholders will be the focus of WP8. The results of MERCES will be disseminated to the widest audience (WP9). The project will be managed through a dedicated management office (WP10). MERCES will contribute to the Blue Growth by: i) improving the EU scientific knowledge on marine restoration, ii) contributing to EU Marine Directives; iii) implementing the Restoration Agenda, iv) enhancing the industrial capacity in this field, v) increasing the competitiveness of EU in the world market of restoration, and vi) offering new employment opportunities.

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iAtlantic will take an interdisciplinary scientific approach to unifying stakeholder efforts to better inform sustainable management and enhance human and observational capacity throughout the Atlantic. The integration of ecosystem data with major circulation pathways connecting the North and South linked with climatic data and forecasts provides a systematic approach to jointly assess and tackle policy challenges. Ocean physics and ecosystem connectivity will enable high-resolution oceanographic hindcasts and forecasts of future circulation together with ground-truthing genomic data. Advances in eDNA genomics, machine learning and autonomous underwater robotics will be combined with existing data to provide a step-changes in predictive habitat mapping approaches to expand species and biodiversity observations from local to basin-scales. Ecological timeseries, including innovative palaeoceanographic and genomic reconstructions, will provide an unprecedented view of the impacts of climate change on Atlantic ecosystems. Assessment of the impact of multiple stressors will identify key drivers of ecosystem change and tipping points. New data will come from 12 carefully selected regions in the deep sea and open ocean that are of international conservation significance and of interest to Blue Economy and Blue Growth sectors. Innovative and efficient data handling and data publishing approaches will establish a better integrated Atlantic Ocean observation data community. Capacity and cooperation between science, industry and policymakers bordering the Atlantic will be boosted by joint multi-disciplinary research cruises, enhanced S Atlantic monitoring arrays, scientific training events, iAtlantic Fellowships and industry focussed workshops. Results will be used to stimulate dialogue with stakeholders and critically assess current ocean governance frameworks generating increased capacity for Marine Spatial Planning and enabling Blue Growth scenarios to be rapidly evaluated.

Primary production by unicellular photosynthetic organisms, collectively called phytoplankton, is a crucial component of oceanic ecosystems and the biogeochemical cycling of carbon in the oceans. Moreover phytoplankton are responsible for around half the photosynthesis on Earth and hence their activity is also a major component of the global carbon cycle. Current techniques and technologies for the measurement of phytoplankton primary production inadequately resolve many of the spatio-temporal scales over which this crucial ecosystem and biogeochemical process varies, limiting our understanding and ability to model the dynamics of this process now and in the future. Moreover all currently available measurement techniques for primary production are prone to considerable methodological errors, including protocol dependent variability (precision) and differences between techniques concerning what precisely they measure and how well the measure it (accuracy). The ability to measure phytoplankton productivity in situ in the ocean using robotic observation platforms, so-called marine autonomous systems (MAS), would represent a step change in our ability to monitor and understand phytoplankton productivity from some of the smallest scales of variability up to the oceanic basin scales which represent some of the largest ecosystems and greatest ecological gradients on the planet. The current proposal thus aims to develop a MAS deployable system for the measurement of phytoplankton primary production. Autonomous measurements of phytoplankton primary production represent a considerable challenge, as the majority of techniques currently available cannot readily be adapted to MAS observational platforms. In this proposal we propose to take advantage of a useful characteristic of phytoplankton to provide the means to measure primary production. Specifically, a proportion of any light shone onto the green pigment chlorophyll, which is a fundamental component of the photosynthetic apparatus, will be re-emitted as fluorescence at a distinct wavelength. The intensity and dynamics of this emitted fluorescence can be quantitatively related to the amount of photosynthesis taking place. Consequently, through the careful design of measurement systems, protocols and data analysis techniques it is possible to derive the rate of photosynthesis using the fluorescence which is emitted as a by-product of the process. Use of such techniques has been investigated for a number of decades. However it is only recently that both enhanced technological capabilities, including reduced power requirements and high quality multi-spectral optics, combined with improved theoretical understanding, including new measurement and data analysis protocols, have combined to put us in a position where we can realistically employ such 'active chlorophyll fluorescence' as a robust autonomous measure of phytoplankton primary production. We thus aim to design, build, test, deploy and verify a novel measurement system which takes advantage of these advances to facilitate new measurements of phytoplankton productivity across multiple platforms and in the address of wide-ranging scientific challenges.