Towards an Understanding and Assessment of Human Impact on Coastal Marine Environments
Update: Considering the situation with the COVID-19 outbreak, the Scientific Committee has decided to postpone the Colloquium to 17-21 May 2021.
The coastal ocean is under increasing multiple (climate and not-climate) pressures that affect its functioning and health, and compromise the provision of services to the society. The set-up of a scientifically underpinned ecosystem-based management scheme for the coastal ocean requires a thorough understanding of human impacts on the physics, biogeochemistry and biodiversity at large scale. Such a management scheme should be firmly embedded in the science-management-policy interface, taking account of selecting useful and communicable indicators for the ecosystem health, targeting ecosystem services and making use of novel analytical tolls acknowledging the complexity of Drivers-Pressures-Stressors-Impacts-Responses (DPSIR) interactions.
The 52nd international colloquium will gather an interdisciplinary community of scientists to overview the progress in our capabilities to understand, monitor and forecast the impact of human activities on coastal marine environments to guarantee a productive and healthy system as requested by the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14.